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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