BICOM

A Russian maritime patrol aircraft with 14 personnel on board was shot down by Syrian air defences yesterday, as the Assad regime came under missile attack.

The Russian Ministry of Defence told the TASS news agency that a Russian IL-20 disappeared over the Mediterranean on Monday evening as it was returning to Latakia province at the same time as a suspected Israeli missile strike by four F-16s. The Ministry said radar systems “detected rocket launches from the French frigate Auvergne,” which was located in that region. Syrian reports say up to 50 missiles were fired over the course of an hour.

A spokesman for the Pentagon told CNN that the missiles were not fired by the US military but would not confirm who was behind the strikes. Another US military source told CNN they believed the Russian plane was shot down by a Syrian anti-aircraft missile. The Israel Defence Forces declined to comment but a French army spokesman denied any involvement in the attack.  Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu has accused Israel of using the Il-20 plane “as cover” and setting it up to be targeted by Syrian air defence missiles. Russia’s defence ministry said Israel gave them a one minute warning ahead of its operation in Syria and that it reserves the right to have ‘an appropriate response to Israel’s irresponsible actions’.

The London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) reported that the target of the suspected Israeli missile strike was warehouses of the Institute for Technical industries in the eastern outskirts of Lattakia city. The US State Department said in 2017 that the institute is a subsidiary of the Syrian Ministry of Defence and has been involved in importing and developing technology for the Syrian military to build ballistic missiles. The Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control also claimed the institute was involved in the production of chemical weapons.

A report released yesterday by SOHR claimed that Israeli strikes on Syria over the past month have led to the deaths of 113 Iranian soldiers, officers and Iranian backed militia fighters. The report also says that 140 Iranian-backed militia fighters have been killed over the past five months.

There are 32,000 armed foreign nationals fighting in Syria alongside troops of the Syrian military – some from Hezbollah, the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps, Iraq, Afghanistan and other countries. The report says 8,000 of those fighters, as well as 1,665 Hezbollah fighters, have died fighting for the Syrian regime during the seven-year civil war.