20 June 2017 12:00 am
By Thomas Gibbons-Neff,
Kareem Fahim · ·
(c) 2017, The Washington Post ·Jun 19, 2017 - A U.S. strike aircraft shot down a Syrian government fighter jet Sunday shortly after the Syrians bombed U.S.-backed fighters in northern Syria, the Pentagon said in a statement.
The Pentagon said the downing of the aircraft came hours after Syrian loyalist forces attacked U.S.-backed fighters, known as the Syrian Democratic Forces, in the village of Ja’Din, southwest of Raqqa. The rare attack was the first time a U.S. jet has shot down a manned hostile aircraft in more than a decade, and signall` ed the United States’ sharply intensifying role in Syria’s war.
The incident is the fourth time within a month that the U.S. military has attacked pro-Syrian government forces. Thomas rejected the Syrian government’s claims that the aircraft was bombing the Islamic State, adding that Ja’Din was controlled by Syrian Democratic Forces and that the terrorist group had not been in the area for some time.