Israel shoots down Syrian jet
Territory breach violates pact, says Netanyahu
BEIRUT • Israel shot down a Syrian fighter jet it said had breached its airspace on Tuesday while advancing Syrian government forces retaking territory from rebels reached the Golan Heights frontier for the first time in seven years.
The Israeli military said it monitored the advance of the Syrian Sukhoi fighter jet and shot it down with a pair of Patriot missiles after it penetrated Israeli airspace by about two kilometres.
Syria’s military, however, said one of its jets was targeted by Israel over Syrian territory as it flew sorties against Islamic State militants.
Syrian forces have been battling rebels and ISIL militants at the frontier with Israel for weeks in a campaign to restore President Bashar Assad’s rule over southwestern Syria. On Tuesday, government forces reached the border fence where a UN peacekeeping force is deployed at the edge of the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights. It was the first time Syrian government had managed to retake the area since 2011, when an uprising swept through Syria against Assad.
Israel captured the Golan Heights from Syria in 1967. The UN deployed peacekeepers between the two sides in 1974.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called the breach of Israeli territory a “gross violation” of a 1974 agreement that established the demilitarized zone between Israel and Syria.
“I have reiterated and made clear that we will not accept any such violation. We will not accept any such penetration of or spillover into our territory, neither on the ground nor from the air,” he said in a statement.
Israel’s military has been on “elevated alert” along the frontier because of activity on the Syrian side of the fence, said military spokesman Lt.-Col. Jonathan Conricus.
The plane flew toward Israel at “relatively high speed” before breaching the country’s airspace, said Conricus.
The plane crashed in the southern part of the Syrian Golan Heights, he said. Israel had no reports on the condition of the pilot.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group said one pilot was killed and that the condition of the other was unknown.
At the United Nations, Israel’s UN Ambassador Danny Danon said that Israel seeks “no escalation in the region” and that the military acted only after the Syrian aircraft entered Israeli airspace.
The Israeli military tried to contact the plane’s pilot several times but there was no response and its only option was “to protect our civilians,” Danon told reporters. “We cannot wait to see what are the real intentions of the pilot,” he said. “That’s what any other country will do in a similar situation.”