Update | Tensions escalate as US shoots down Syrian warplane and Iran launches missile strikes at ‘terror bases’
The United States had not shot down a Syrian regime aircraft before Sunday’s confrontation, while Iran’s missile attack was the first outside its own territory in 30 years
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An American fighter jet shot down a Syrian warplane that the US-led coalition said attacked its allies in the fight against the Islamic State group in the war-torn country.
The escalation comes as Syria’s six-year-old war becomes ever more complex, with US forces and their allies converging on the northern IS bastion of Raqqa in close proximity to Russian-backed regime troops.
Further complicating matters, Iran said it launched missile strikes Sunday against “terror bases” in Syria’s northeastern Deir-ez-Zor province in revenge for deadly attacks on its capital claimed by IS.
Iranian state television quoted General Ramazan Sharif on Monday as saying that “if they (IS) carry out a specific action to violate our security, definitely there will be more launches, with intensified strength.”
The US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces - an alliance of Kurdish and Arab fighters - is battling to oust the jihadists from Raqqa, and broke into the IS stronghold city last week.
Government forces are not involved in the battle for Raqqa, but they are advancing in an area southwest of the city, skirting around SDF fighters, their eyes set on the oil-rich province of Deir-ez-Zor.
“Aircraft from the ‘international coalition’ targeted one of our fighter planes in the Resafa region of southern Raqqa province this afternoon while it was conducting a mission against the terrorist Islamic State group,” said the army.
Video shows IRGC's surface-to-surface missile headed from western Iran to terrorists' HQ in Syria's Dayr al-Zawr pic.twitter.com/MygFH6xLRY— Press TV (@PressTV) June 18, 2017
It warned of “the grave consequences of this flagrant aggression”, using language similar to Russia’s deputy foreign minister Sergei Ryabkov.
“This strike has to be seen as a continuation of America’s line to disregard the norms of international law,” Ryabkov told journalists in Moscow, according to the TASS state news agency.
“What is this if not an act of aggression?” he said in Russia’s first official reaction to the downing of the plane on Sunday.
The US-led coalition confirmed it shot down the Syrian warplane it said had dropped bombs near SDF forces.
“At 6:43 pm, a Syrian regime SU-22 dropped bombs near SDF fighters... in accordance with rules of engagement and in collective self-defence of Coalition partnered forces, was immediately shot down by a US F/A-18E Super Hornet,” the Combined Joint Task Force said in a statement.
It said that two hours earlier, forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad had attacked the SDF in Jaaydine, south of Tabqa, “wounding a number of SDF fighters and driving the SDF from the town”.
It was referring to a large stretch of desert that extends over some 90,000 square kilometres from central Syria to the borders with Iraq and Jordan to the east and southeast.
Since 2015, much of the badiya has been held by the jihadist group, but Syria’s army has been chipping away at it for months.
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the fighting broke out in two villages, Jaaydine and Shouwayhane, some 40 kilometres south of Raqa.
The Observatory said the clashes came after regime troops had reached the edges of Resafa, also in the same area, as part of an offensive to reach Deir-ez-Zor.
“The regime is trying to reach the oil province of Deir-ez-Zor through Raqqa,” Observatory head Rami Abdel Rahman said.
The regime has lost control of many oil and gas fields since the start in 2011 of Syria’s conflict, especially in the provinces of Homs and Deir-ez-Zor.
Most of the province is held by IS, including parts of the provincial capital, Deir-ez-Zor city, and the jihadists are besieging government-held parts of the city.
SDF fighters entered Raqqa on June 6 after months of heavy clashes to encircle it, and the US-led coalition has been backing them with air strikes, equipment and special forces advisers.
Since then they have seized a few neighbourhoods, including one in the east and one in the west, and are battling to push into the Old City of Raqqa.
An estimated 300,000 civilians were believed to have been living under IS rule in Raqqa, including 80,000 who fled there from other parts of the country.
Seventeen people were killed when gunmen and suicide bombers attacked the parliament complex and the shrine of revolutionary leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in the Iranian capital.
Iranian television showed footage of the missiles being launched into the night sky.
It was the first missile attack by Iran outside its own territory in 30 years, since the Iran-Iraq war of 1980-88, media in the Islamic republic reported.
Senior Iranian officials had put the blame on Riyadh after the attacks, saying Saudi Arabia was “promoting terrorist groups” in Iran, while the Guard vowed to avenge the bloodshed.
Iran has sent to Syria military advisers as well as thousands of “volunteer” fighters recruited among its own nationals, and among Shiite communities in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
More than 320,000 people have been killed in Syria since the conflict began with anti-government protests in March 2011 before turning into a complex war involving regional and international players.
