Israel Downs Syrian Fighter Jet Over Golan Heights

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JERUSALEM — Israel shot down a Syrian fighter jet on Tuesday after it penetrated about a mile into Israeli-controlled airspace over the Golan Heights, the Israeli military said.

A rare event, the encounter highlighted the heightened risk of entanglement as Syrian government forces advance to retake areas long held by rebel insurgents along the country’s frontier with Israel.

The Israel Defense Forces said they had fired two Patriot surface-to-air missiles at the warplane, which the military said was either a Sukhoi 22 or Sukhoi 24, according to initial assessments. It crashed on the Syrian side of the lines in the southern Syrian Golan Heights. The fate of the pilot, or pilots, was not immediately known.

This was the second time during Syria’s seven-year civil war that Israel has intercepted a warplane; the first was in 2014.





Source : Nytimes