JERUSALEM — Israel’s military said it shot down a Syrian fighter jet Tuesday after the aircraft strayed less than a mile into airspace that Israel controls over the Golan Heights.
The Syrian government made no official condemnation. The Syrian crew safely ejected. Israeli officials said they assumed that the warplane had made a mistake, albeit one they would not allow to go unpunished.
Military experts in Israel said it was the first time in nearly 30 years that Israel downed a Syrian attack aircraft, although a Syrian drone that entered Israeli-occupied territory last month was shot down.
The incident reflects how the Golan — captured by Israel in the 1967 Arab-Israeli war — is increasingly being drawn into the tensions in war-torn Syria amid the growing reach of Islamist militants who now control more than 90 percent of the Syrian-Israeli frontier.
The Israeli army fired a U.S.-made Patriot surface-to-air missile at the Syrian jet, a Soviet-made Sukhoi-24. According to the Israeli military, the two Syrian crew members ejected and came down safely inside Syria.
