An Islamic State militant stands next to residents as they hold a piece of wreckage from the warplane downed in Raqa yesterday.
AFP/Damascus
Militants shot down a Syrian warplane conducting strikes on the Islamic State group stronghold of Raqa yesterday, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group said.
“IS fighters fired on a military aircraft which crashed,” the Britain-based group said.
“It is the first aircraft shot down since the regime launched air strikes against the jihadists in July following their declaration of a caliphate in late June,” said the group, which relies on a wide network of doctors and activists for its reports.
Observatory director Rami Abdel Rahman said the plane was carrying out strikes on the IS stronghold of Raqa when it was hit.
It crashed into a house in the Euphrates Valley city, the sole provincial capital entirely out of Syrian government control, causing deaths and injuries on the ground, he added.
A photograph posted on a militant Twitter account purported to show the burnt-out wreckage of the plane.
“Allahu Akbar, thanks to God we can confirm that a military aircraft has been shot down over Raqa,” another account said, congratulating the “lions of the Islamic State”.
Elsewhere in Syria yesterday, the Observatory said at least 11 missiles had been fired at parts of Damascus by an Islamist rebel group, killing a child and injuring several people.
The missiles hit districts known as Christian or Alawite areas, or for being upscale residential districts, including Sabaa Bahrat, Malki, Abu Rumana, Qasaa and Mazze.
The rocket fire came a day after an Islamist rebel group warned it would begin a new campaign of fire against the capital targeting “presidential, military and security areas”.
It said the rocket fire would be a response to the regime’s “appalling massacres and vicious bombing” in rebel-held areas in Damascus and the surrounding province.
Syria forces have been pounding rebel-held areas outside the capital for weeks, with at least 11 people killed in the Hamouriya area, east of Damascus, in regime air strikes yesterday, the Observatory said.
Earlier, the Observatory said at least two members of regime forces were killed in clashes with rebels including Al Qaeda affiliate Al Nusra Front in Damascus province.
The fighting in Dakhaniya, near the eastern outskirts of Damascus, also killed 12 opposition fighters overnight.
In the capital, meanwhile, the Observatory said the toll in a failed rebel attempt to infiltrate a district adjacent to the Old City had risen to 11 opposition fighters killed.
