Israel shoots down Syrian warplane
One pilot killed, another missing as Golan Heights region heats up
DAMASCUS — A pilot of a Syrian warplane which Israel said on Tuesday it shot down was killed, and the plane crashed in the Islamic State group-held Syrian territory near the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, a monitor group reported.
On Wednesday morning, an official based in Syria and allied with government forces said the IS extremists have seized the pilot’s body. He did not give further details.
The search for the aircraft’s second pilot is under way, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.
Israel captured the Golan Heights from Syria in 1967. The United Nations deployed peacekeepers in the area in 1974.
Syrian forces have been battling rebels and IS extremists at the frontier with Israel for weeks in a campaign to restore the government’s rule in the southwestern Syria.
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.
Earlier on Tuesday, the Israeli army said its air defenses intercepted a Syrian Sukhoi plane penetrating into the Golan Heights.
Two Patriot missiles were later fired at the fighter jet after it traveled 2 kilometers into northern Israel, it added.
Shortly after the downing, Israel’s UN Ambassador Danny Danon said his country seeks “no escalation in the region”.
Danon said Israeli forces saw the plane “crossing the border . ... We tried to contact a few times, and there was no response.”
He added that in such cases, “the only thing we can do is to protect our civilians”. Danon spoke at the UN headquarters before the Security Council’s monthly Middle East meeting.
He said that there was no time to “wait to see what are the real intentions of the pilot” and added “that’s what any other country will do in a similar situation”.
The Syrian state news agency SANA also reported the Israeli attack, saying the warplane was flying inside Syrian airspace when it was hit.
The warplane was targeting positions of ultraradical groups in southern Syria near the Israel-occupied Golan Heights, SANA said.
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 the Syrian government had managed to retake the area since 2011.
The incident came two days after Israeli warplanes targeted a Syrian military position in the city of Mesyaf in the central province of Hama, the latest in a spate of attacks Israel has carried out against military positions inside Syria on the pretext of wiping out Iranian fighters and weapons.
The Syrian airstrikes have been targeting the IS positions in southwestern Daraa near the Golan Heights.
Pro-government Al-Ekhbariah TV said the Syrian army captured all areas between Daraa and the Israel-occupied Golan Heights except for an estimated 50-square-km area that is controlled by the IS group.