The
Russian Ministry of Defense said today that an Airbus 320 passenger plane
carrying 172 passengers was close to being subjected to fire from the Syrian
air defense systems while they were responding to the recent Israeli raids near
Damascus, Moscow accused Tel Aviv of
using the civil plane as a shield to protect its fighters from Syrian fire.
An Israeli F-16 fighter takes off from a military base near the city of Eilat (Getty-Archive)
The ministry said in a statement that thanks to the
operations of the Damascus airport controllers and the effective operation of
the automatic air traffic control system, the passenger plane was removed from
the Syrian air defense fire zone, and landed safely at the nearest alternative
airport at the Russian Hmeimim air base northwest of Syria.
The plane was coming from Tehran to Damascus, but the
nationality of the plane is not known yet.
Israeli bombing
Israeli fighters bombed targets in the vicinity of Damascus at dawn yesterday,
has been targeted by the Syrian air defenses, and Israel declined to comment.
The Russian Ministry of Defense added that Israel is
taking civilian shields during its military operations in Syria, in order to
hinder the work of the Syrian air defense system.
The Russian army stressed that the Israeli radars had
"a clear view of the situation in the airspace around Damascus
airport," accusing Tel Aviv of "completely disregarding the lives of
hundreds of innocent civilians."
A previous incident
This incident brings to mind what happened in September 2018, as Russia accused
Israel that its fighter planes had hidden behind a Russian "Il-20"
reconnaissance plane while launching an attack in Syria, causing the Russian
plane to come under Syrian fire and fall to the Syrian coast off Lattakia
governorate, its fall resulted in the death of 15 military personnel on board.
After this incident, Russia said it had upgraded Syrian
air defenses with S-300 missile systems.
This incident also comes less than a month after the
Iranian armed forces admitted to downing "by mistake" in early
January a Boeing 737 plane belonging to the Ukrainian Airlines minutes after
take off from Tehran airport. At that time, Iran was on high alert,
fearing an American response to the Iranian Revolutionary Guards ’bombing of
two American bases in Iraq.
Since the start of the Syrian crisis in 2011, Israel
has launched hundreds of strikes on sites of the Syrian regime's army, as well
as sites of its allies including Iran and the Lebanese Hezbollah, and Tel Aviv
has repeated in recent years that it will not allow arms shipments from Syria
to Hezbollah and will not allow Iran to be stationed militarily in Syrian
territory
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