Israel shoots down Syrian fighter jet

PanARMENIAN.Net - An Israeli Patriot missile battery has shot down a Syrian fighter jet that infiltrated half a mile into airspace controlled by Israel over the Golan Heights on Tuesday, Sept 23 morning, The Guardian reported.

Video footage of the first such downing by Israel of a Syrian jet since 1982 showed two burning sections of the plane falling to the ground and then the parachutes of the pilot and navigator who ejected moments before impact.

Syria immediately condemned the downing of the jet, with state television describing it as an “act of aggression” and linking it to US-led air strikes against Islamic State (Isis) forces in Syria that had occurred earlier.

The jet entered Israeli-controlled airspace a few minutes before 9am and was flying at between 10,000 and 14,000 feet when it was engaged.

An Israeli military source said a “Syrian aircraft infiltrated into Israeli airspace [and was] intercepted in mid-flight, using the Patriot air defence system”.

Military sources and experts described the plane as a Sukhoi 24, which they say had flown from Saikal air base in eastern Syria. They said they believed it had strayed into Israeli-controlled airspace while fully armed on a mission to bomb anti-government groups on the other side of the border.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the warplane had been bombing areas outside Quneitra, a Syrian town near the Israeli-held side of the frontier, at the time it was shot down.

The decision to bring down the aircraft was taken after it had spent one minute and 20 seconds in Israeli airspace. Defending the decision, sources and military experts said the infiltration by an armed enemy aircraft could not be tolerated.

Israel’s defence minister, Moshe Ya’alon, said the Syrian warplane had “approached Israeli territory in the Golan Heights in a threatening manner, and even crossed the border”.

He said Israel “has made it clear in the past, and is reiterating now: we will not allow anyone, neither state nor terror organisation, to threaten our security and to violate our sovereignty.”

In recent weeks, fighting on the Golan Heights – which Israel captured from Syria during the six day war in 1967 – has raised tensions on the normally quiet border.

The regime of Syria’s president, Bashar al-Assad, has recently been fighting al-Qaeda-linked groups around the Quneitra border crossing.

Israel has largely stayed on the sidelines of the civil war raging across the border in Syria. But Israeli leaders appear increasingly nervous about the possibility of fighters linked to al-Qaeda occupying the Golan’s high ground over northern Israel.

During the civil war, Israeli troops have responded to occasional mortar fire that has landed on their side of the Golan. Israel says some of the attacks have been accidental spillover, while others have been intentionally aimed at Israeli civilians and soldiers. It has always held Syria responsible for any cross-border fire.

Despite Tuesday’s incident, the former Israeli air force commander Eitan Ben Eliyahu said he did not believe that the Assad regime was trying to provoke an escalation, adding that he did not believe the aircraft posed a threat to Israel before it was shot down.