By: Agencies
Source: http://mwcnews.net/
The Israeli military has shot down a Syrian aircraft that it said had infiltrated it airspace over the Golan Heights.
Tuesday’s incident was the most serious incident to take place on the strategic plateau since the outbreak of the Syrian civil war in 2011.
Army radio said it was apparently a MiG-21 fighter jet which was shot down by a surface-to-air Patriot missile, with the wreckage landing on the Syrian-controlled side of the plateau.
There was no official confirmation over the type of the aircraft.
Israel has largely stayed on the sidelines of Syria’s civil war raging across the border, but its leaders appear increasingly nervous about the possibility of al-Qaeda-linked fighters occupying the Golan’s high ground over northern Israel.
Syrian state TV quoted a military source saying the downing of the plane, which coincided with US-led air strikes against the Islamic State in Syria (ISIL), came “in the framework of [Israel’s] support for the terrorist [ISIL] and the Nusra Front”.
Annexed territory
Since the uprising against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s government erupted more than three years ago, the plateau has been tense, with a growing number of rockets and mortar rounds hitting the Israeli side, most of them stray, prompting occasional retaliatory fire.
But there have been several incidents of intentional fire, one of which killed an Israeli teenager in June.
Israel seized 1,200 square kilometres of the Golan in 1967, then annexed it in 1981 in a move never recognised by the international community.
About 510 square kilometres of the Golan remain on the Syrian side of the ceasefire line, with UN forces overseeing a buffer zone stretching some 70km from Lebanon in the north to Jordan in the south.
