A Syrian fighter jet that allegedly crossed into the occupied Golan Heights by the Israeli army as heavy fighting continued between the Syrian military and the last rebel holdouts in the country’s southwest.
According to Spokesman Lieutenant-Colonel Jonathan Conricus, the Syrian Sukhoi fighter jet flew towards the direction of Israel at “relatively high speed” before breaching the country’s airspace.
He added that it was not known whether the plane deliberately crossed into Israel. He also said that there was no immediate information over the fate of its pilots.
The military kept a watch over the advance of the aircraft and shot it down by launching a pair of Patriot missiles after it entered Israeli airspace by about two kilometers. As a result of the attack, the plane crashed in the southern part of the Syrian Golan Heights, Conricus said.
According to Syrian state media version, the fighter jet was targeted in Syrian airspace while conducting raids against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) and other fighters in southern Syria.
“The Israeli enemy confirms its support for the armed terrorist groups and targets one of our warplanes, which was striking their groups in the area of Saida, on the edge of the Yarmouk Valley in Syrian airspace,” Syrian news agency SANA quoted a military source as saying.
The shooting incident comes during a Russia-backed Syrian offensive to retake parts of southern parts of Syria which the Bashar al-Assad government lost to rebels during the civil war that started in 2011.
The state media of Syria said that government forces reached the frontier with the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights after capturing territory – the first time ever they took up positions there since the 2011 uprising.
“Since the morning hours, there has been an increase in the internal fighting in Syria, including an increase in the activity of the Syrian Air Force,” the Israeli army said in a statement.
Israel is always concerned that the Syrian military will attempt to enter a buffer zone established back in 1974 that borders the Golan Heights. Israel’s military will “continue to operate against” any breach of the 1974 UN armistice deal that established buffer zones on the Golan, the statement said.
The United Nations Middle East envoy, Nickolay Mladenov, urged everyone to abide by the 1974 truce, highlighting “a disturbing trajectory of increasingly frequent and dangerous confrontations” between Israel and Syria.
“I call on all parties to abide by all the provisions of the 1974 agreement and support the role of UNDOF in that regard,” Mladenov told the UN Security Council while referring to the UN Disengagement and Observer Force that monitors a 1974 Israeli-Syrian accord.
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