JERUSALEM
Israel downed a Syrian warplane over the Golan Heights on Tuesday in the first such incident in three decades and warned it would respond “forcefully” if its security is threatened.
It was the first time Israel had shot down a piloted Syrian plane since 1985 and drew a sharp response from Damascus.
Israel said the Syrian fighter jet had crossed the UN-patrolled ceasefire line on the Golan which it regards as its international border. Pictures taken by AFP showed smoke rising from the Syrian village of Jubata al-Khashab which had been bombed by the warplane just moments before it was shot down by a Patriot surface-to-air missile fired by Israel.
The burning wreckage, also caught on camera, plunged down on the Syrian side of the ceasefire line. Defence Minister Moshe Yaalon said the army had brought down “a Syrian fighter plane which approached Israel’s sovereign territory on the Golan in a threatening manner, and even crossed the frontier.” Israel seized 1,200 square kilometres of the strategic plateau from Syria during the Six-Day War of 1967, then annexed it in 1981 in a move never recognised by the international community.
Meanwhile, Russian President Vladimir Putin warned just ahead of Tuesday’s US air strikes in Syria that the offensive should not be carried out without the Syrian government’s permission, in a phone call with United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon.
“The Russian side stressed that directing air strikes against the bases of Islamic State terrorists in Syria should not be carried out without the agreement of the Syrian government,” said a Kremlin statement issued shortly after midnight local time (20:00 GMT Monday).
The United States, with backing from five allied Arab states, launched strikes from the air and sea against Islamic State militants in Syria early on Tuesday.
Russia, which is locked in a showdown with the West over Ukraine, said earlier this month that unilateral US air strikes in Syria would be a violation of international law. Putin will not attend a UN General Assembly that gathers in New York on Wednesday which is expected to focus much of its attention on the militant advance in Iraq and Syria.
The UN refugee agency warned Tuesday that as many as 400,000 people may flee to Turkey from Syria’s Kurdish region to escape attacks by the Islamic State group.
UNHCR spokeswoman Melissa Fleming told reporters that 138,000 terrified Syrians, mainly Kurds, had escaped to Turkey since Friday. Kurdish militia in Syria are battling to defend the key northern border town of Ain al-Arab, or Kobane, from an IS onslaught.
The Damascus government said it had been informed by Washington of the air strikes it began early Tuesday on Islamic State group (IS) targets on Syrian soil.
“Yesterday (Monday), the Americans informed the Syrian representative at the United Nations that strikes would be carried out against the terrorist IS organisation in Raqa,” the group’s Syrian stronghold, a foreign ministry statement quoted by state television said.
The television reported multiple strikes on Raqa province, in the Euphrates Valley northeast of the capital.
“US warplanes have started carrying out air strikes against positions of the terrorist Daesh organisation in Raqa,” it said, using the Arabic acronym for IS.
It was the first that Washington had launched air strikes against the militants in Syria. It began an air war against IS in Iraq on August 8.
Washington, which has backed the opposition in Syria’s three-and-a-half year civil war, had ruled out any cooperation with the Damascus regime against IS.
US media reported that five Arab allies had joined in the strikes - Bahrain, Jordan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.
The Pentagon did not immediately confirm where the strikes took place, but activists reported some 20 strikes against IS targets in Raqa province.
Raqa is the militants’ main bastion in Syria but they also control most of Deir Ezzor province further east, as well as sections of Aleppo in the north and Hasakeh in the northeast.