Israel downs Syrian fighter jet over the Golan Heights

JERUSALEM — Israel shot down a Syrian fighter jet Tuesday after it penetrated Israeli-controlled airspace over the Golan Heights, the military said, a rare encounter that underscored the heightened risk of confrontation in the area.

As Syrian government forces advance to retake areas long held by rebels along the frontier with Israel, the military said it fired two Patriot surfaceto-air missiles at the plane.

The downing of the jet, which crashed on the Syrian side of the Golan Heights, was only the second time during the 7-yearold Syrian war that Israel had intercepted a warplane. The first was in 2014.

Israeli forces were on alert for any possible Syrian retaliation. Tensions in the area were already high as Syrian government forces advanced. But Syria, which has long been in a state of war with Israel, has so far avoided fighting on the Israeli front, focusing instead on its internal enemies and largely maintaining the truce with Israel that has held since 1974.

The Israeli military said the jet was either a Sukhoi 22 or Sukhoi 24. According to initial, unconfirmed reports from Syria, it was a Sukhoi 24 with a two-man crew. One pilot was said to have been killed; the fate of the other was unknown.

It was not immediately clear whether the warplane had intentionally penetrated Israeli-controlled airspace or had strayed from its path. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said it was “a gross violation of the 1974 Separation of Forces Agreement with Syria.”

“We will not accept any such penetration of, or spillover into, our territory, neither on the ground nor in the air. Our forces acted appropriately,” he said.

The episode grabbed the attention of the United Nations Security Council, which coincidentally was holding a regular meeting on the Middle East.

“These hostilities demonstrate a disturbing trajectory of increasingly frequent and dangerous confrontations,” Nickolay Mladenov, the U.N. special coordinator for the Middle East peace process, told the council.

Danny Danon, Israel’s U.N. ambassador who also appeared before the council, echoed Netanyahu’s warning to Syria not to breach the truce that followed the 1973 Yom Kippur War. Israel has controlled a large, strategically important portion of the Golan Heights since capturing it from Syria in the 1967 war and again pushing back Syrian forces in the 1973 war.

Under the 1974 agreement, both sides pledged to refrain from all military action against each other.

The Syrian state news agency, SANA, confirmed that Israel had shot down a Syrian jet but offered a different account, saying the plane was bombing rebels in southern Syria.