The Russian Ministry of Defense on Friday said that Israeli air forces nearly shot down a passenger jetliner in Syria during a missile strike on the suburbs of Damascus a day earlier.
The allegation comes as tensions run high in Syria, where fighting has escalated in the northern province of Idlib. Syrian government forces, backed by the Russian military, have clashed with Turkish troops that support the opposition there after failing to observe a ceasefire.
A spokesman for the Israeli prime minister did not respond to a request for comment. Israel rarely acknowledges strikes carried out in Syria.
Israel has repeatedly struck Syrian and Iran-linked targets in Syria in the past few years and has vowed to push back against increasing Iranian influence in its neighboring country.
The news of the alleged near-miss came amid jitters just a month after a Ukrainian passenger plane crashed shortly after take-off from Tehran, killing all 176 people on board.
Iran said the plane was mistakenly shot down by its paramilitary Revolutionary Guard.
In a statement, Russian Ministry of Defense spokesperson Igor Konashenkov said that the strike was carried out at about 2am on Thursday.
Four Israeli F-16 jets hit the suburbs of Damascus with eight missiles without taking into account that a passenger plane with 172 civilians on board was preparing to land in the city’s airport around the same time, he said.
Konashenkov did not name the airline or flight number, saying only that it was an Airbus A320 en route from Tehran that “came near to entering the zone of a deadly anti-aircraft missile and artillery fire.”
The plane had to make an emergency landing at Hmeimeem Air Base, which is operated by the Russian military, about 300km north of Damascus, he said.
The Russian claims have not been independently verified.
FlightRadar24, a Web site that tracks air traffic, showed Syrian airline Cham Wings Flight 514 — an Airbus A320-211 — taking off from Najaf at 1:07am local time on Thursday morning. It could be seen approaching Damascus about an hour later before turning back and diverting its course to the north.
It appears to have landed in or near Hmeimeem half an hour later.
Flightradar24 listed the arrival time and destination as unknown.
The airline offered no immediate comment.
The US Department of the Treasury placed Cham Wings on its sanctions list in 2016 for allegedly transporting militants to Syria to fight on behalf of the Syrian government and for moving weapons and equipment to aid it in the nine-year conflict.
In the statement, the Russian military accused Israel of endangering the “lives of hundreds of innocent civilians.”
“Scheduled airline traffic in the Syrian air space, as well as everywhere in the world, takes place on well-known altitude flight levels and is clearly detected by Israel’s radar equipment,” Konashenkov said.
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