U.S. fells 2nd aircraft this week over Syria

Drone said to pose peril for coalition forces

A Syrian woman hangs laundry outside her tent at a refugee camp in Baalbek, Lebanon, on Tuesday. United Nations officials announced Tuesday, on World Refugee Day, that the European Union had donated about $100 million to provide aid to displaced Syrians in Lebanon, Jordan and Turkey.
A Syrian woman hangs laundry outside her tent at a refugee camp in Baalbek, Lebanon, on Tuesday. United Nations officials announced Tuesday, on World Refugee Day, that the European Union had donated about $100 million to provide aid to displaced Syrians in Lebanon, Jordan and Turkey.

BEIRUT -- A U.S. F-15E fighter aircraft shot down an Iranian-made drone over southern Syria on Tuesday, the U.S. military said, marking the second time this week that the U.S. military has shot a pro-Syrian government aircraft out of the sky.

The U.S.-led coalition fighting the Islamic State militant group said the U.S. fighter jet shot down the drone "after it displayed hostile intent" while approaching a military camp near the Syria-Jordan border.

The drone, roughly the size of a U.S. Predator unmanned aerial vehicle, was armed and within range of striking U.S.-led coalition troops and their Syrian allies, a U.S. military official said, speaking on condition of anonymity before the incident was made public. The official added that the strike was in "self-defense."

A similar drone -- an Iranian Shahed 129 -- was shot down in the same location after it dropped munitions near coalition forces on June 8.

CNN was first to report Tuesday's incident.

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On Sunday, for the first time during the conflict in Syria, the U.S. shot down a Syrian jet near Raqqa after the aircraft dropped bombs near the U.S.-allied Syrian Democratic Forces, a group that is battling the Islamic State. Russia condemned the U.S. action and in retaliation suspended a hotline intended to prevent such incidents.

Asked Tuesday whether the hotline was no longer being used, a Pentagon spokesman, Navy Capt. Jeff Davis, said he could not discuss the matter beyond saying the U.S. stands ready to use the hotline.

"The deconfliction line has proven effective at mitigating strategic miscalculations and escalating tense situations, and to be clear, we prefer to keep this channel of communication open. We want to de-escalate, not escalate," Davis said. "We remain available on our end. I'll leave it to the Russians to state their level of participation."

Lt. Col. Damien Pickart, the spokesman for the U.S.-led air war command at Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar, said the hotline had not been interrupted.

"The deconfliction channel remains active and in use," Pickart said.

Lt. Gen. Jeffrey Harrigian, who commands the coalition-led air campaign over Syria, said Monday that the United States would re-position its aircraft to minimize the risk from Syrian and Russian air defenses but would continue its strikes against the Islamic State in Syria. He also confirmed that there had been recent instances in which ground-based air defenses were directed at coalition planes.

The U.S. has also fired on Syrian government ground forces in the east on two occasions in the past month.

Tuesday's drone shoot-down is the latest escalation between the United States and forces loyal to Syrian President Bashar Assad. In just over a month, U.S. forces have struck Iranian-backed Shiite militias in southern Syria three times, and on Sunday a U.S. F/A-18 shot down a Syrian Arab Air Force Su-22 jet.

All of the strikes, the Pentagon has said, were in self-defense and legal under the Authorization for Use of Military Force passed after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks in the U.S.

The presence of Iranian-backed troops, artillery and tanks and U.S.-led coalition forces in southern Syria, namely around the at-Tanf crossing at the Iraq-Syria border, has slowly turned the area into a flash point.

The U.S. military has established a roughly 31-mile "deconfliction" ring around at-Tanf, warning the pro-Assad, Iranian-backed forces through a Russian deconfliction channel that movement within the zone could be considered hostile. The Iranian drone that was shot down Tuesday was outside the deconfliction area, the official said.

Despite bouts of relative calm, the pro-Assad forces have continued to encroach, at one point moving along the periphery of the deconfliction area to the Iraqi border and driving a wedge between at-Tanf and the Euphrates River Valley. With pro-Syrian government forces now between U.S.-backed fighters at at-Tanf and predominantly Islamic State-controlled areas, any future offensive in the area will be difficult.

Australia suspends strikes

There are concerns that further confrontations could lead to a breakout of hostilities that would hinder the battle against the Islamic State.

Australia on Tuesday suspended its airstrikes against Islamic State targets in Syria as a precaution, after Russia announced that it was suspending the hotline and warned the U.S.-led coalition not to fly over Syrian army positions west of the Euphrates River.

The decision will not have a major effect on the air campaign in Syria, where Australia's F/A-18s rarely fly. Australian reconnaissance and refueling tanks have operated there and have been moved out of Syrian airspace, paralleling what the United States and other coalition members have done at a time of increased tensions between the United States and the Assad government and its Iranian and Russian allies.

In another first, Iran fired ballistic missiles at Islamic State targets in eastern Syria, in the province of Deir el-Zour, later on Sunday. Iran's Revolutionary Guard described the strike as revenge for Islamic State attacks on Tehran earlier this month that killed at least 18 people and wounded more than 50.

A spokesman for the Revolutionary Guard, Gen. Ramazan Sharif, said all six ballistic missiles hit their targets, citing "local sources" and drone footage.

Sharif said the missile launch reflected Iran's "military power," though Iran has no intention of starting another war. It is still unclear what the missiles struck, and Iran has provided few details.

Israeli security officials said Monday that they were studying the missile strike to see what they could learn about its accuracy and capabilities.

Elsewhere, the U.S. military confirmed Tuesday that top ISIS cleric Turki al-Binali was killed in a coalition airstrike May 31 in Mayadeen, Syria. The Bahraini cleric wrote religious justifications for the enslavement of hundreds of women from Iraq's Yazidi minority and helped establish the Islamic State branch in Libya.

Activists and Islamic State supporters reported his death at the time, but Tuesday's statement from Central Command was the first U.S. confirmation.

Fighting and bombardment, meanwhile, resumed early Tuesday between Syrian government forces and rebels in the southern city of Daraa and nearby areas, where a 48-hour truce had gone into effect Saturday. The truce was meant to be extended but now appears to have collapsed.

A Syrian military official in Damascus said the truce was not extended. He spoke on condition of anonymity in line with regulations.

"The situation is back as it was in Daraa city and fighting is ongoing," said Daraa-based opposition activist Ahmad al-Masalmeh. "The regime made the truce and then violated it."

The activist-run Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported that government troops captured a hill west of the city and a former army base that was held by rebels. It said government helicopters dropped 55 barrel bombs on Daraa while warplanes carried out about 20 airstrikes.

Daraa is where the March 2011 uprising against the Assad family's four-decade rule began. The conflict quickly descended into a civil war, which has since left at least 400,000 people dead.

The push by Syrian government forces in the Daraa area appears headed for the Jordanian border, two weeks after Assad's troops reached the border with Iraq for the first time in years.

Information for this article was contributed by Thomas Gibbons-Neff and Louisa Loveluck of The Washington Post; by Zeina Karam, Robert Burns, Bassem Mroue, Rod McGuirk, Albert Aji and Nasser Karimi of The Associated Press; and by Michael R. Gordon of The New York Times.

A Section on 06/21/2017

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A map showing aerial confrontations in Syria.

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