MOSCOW: Warplanes from the US-led coalition operating over Syrian airspace west of the Euphrates River will be treated as potential targets, Russia’s Defence Ministry said on Monday, a day after the US military shot down a Syrian air force jet.

Russia, Syria’s main ally, also said it is suspending a cooperative pact with the US aimed at maintaining airspace safety in Syria, BBC reported. The latest spat came a day after an American F18E Super Hornet fighter jet downed on Sunday a Syrian SU-22 which was targeting areas held by a US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), a Kurdish-Arab coalition militia fighting the Islamic State in the city of Raqqa.

“Any aircraft, including planes and drones belonging to the international coalition operating west of the Euphrates river, will be tracked by Russian anti-aircraft forces in the sky and on the ground and treated as targets,” the ministry said. – </s> Russia's defence ministry says it will treat US-led coalition planes in Syria, west of the Euphrates River, as targets after the US military shot down a Syrian Air Force jet on Sunday (18 June).

Moscow has condemned the US downing of the Syrian government fighter jet after it dropped bombs nears US partner forces.

The Russian defence ministry says in a statement that, starting Monday, it will track all jets and drones of the US-led coalition west of the Euphrates and treat them as targets.

The ministry also called on the US military to provide a full account of why it decided to shoot down the Syrian SU-22.

Russia, a key backer of Syrian President Bashar Assad, has been providing an air cover to the government's offensive on Isis since 2015.

Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov told Russian news agencies on Monday that the downing was akin to "helping the terrorists that the US is fighting against".

Ryabkov asks: "What is this, if not an act of aggression?" </s> Move follows Moscow’s warning coalition planes west of Euphrates will be a potential target after US shot down Syrian fighter jet

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This article is more than 2 years old

Australia has suspended air combat missions over Syria after Russia threatened that it would treat any plane from the US-led coalition flying west of the Euphrates river as a potential target.



Russia said it was responding to US planes shooting down a Syrian air force jet on Sunday. The US said its planes had acted to defend US-backed forces seeking to capture Raqqa, the Islamic State (Isis) stronghold in north-east Syria.

“As a precautionary measure, Australian defence force strike operations into Syria have temporarily ceased,” the Australian Department of Defence said on Tuesday.

Australia has six fighter jets based in the United Arab Emirates that strike targets in Syria and Iraq.

Australia does have influence. It should use it to create safe zones in Syria | Hamish de Bretton-Gordon Read more

A spokesman for the Department of Defence told the ABC that the situation would be monitored and sorties over Iraq would continue. “Australian defence force personnel are closely monitoring the air situation in Syria and a decision on the resumption of ADF air operations in Syria will be made in due course,” he said.

The UK Ministry of Defence said it would continue its operations against Isis as part of the US-led coalition in Syria.

Moscow’s warning on Monday to US-allied warplanes west of the Euphrates escalated the threat of a direct Russian-American confrontation in Syria, following the first US shooting down of a fighter jet belonging to the regime since the start of the civil war six years ago.

Russia stressed it would in future be tracking the coalition’s jets, not shooting them down, but added that “a threat for those jets may appear only if they take action that poses a threat to Russian aircraft”.

Moscow’s foreign ministry said: “All kinds of airborne vehicles, including aircraft and UAVs [unmanned aerial vehicles] of the international coalition, detected to the west of the Euphrates river will be tracked by the Russian SAM systems as air targets.”

The Russian foreign ministry also said it would respond to the attack by suspending its communications channel with US forces, which is designed to prevent collisions and dangerous incidents in Syrian airspace.



The top US general, Joseph Dunford, sought to play down the repercussions of the incident, insisting the hotline established eight months ago between US central command in Qatar and its Russian equivalent in Syria was still open and functioning.

The Russian military had threatened to close the hotline, known as the “deconfliction channel”, in April after the US president, Donald Trump, ordered a missile strike against a Syrian airbase allegedly involved in a chemical weapons attack.

The growing risk of a confrontation between the US and Russia follows Trump’s decision to grant his military chiefs untrammelled control of military strategy in Syria.



The deputy foreign minister, Sergei Ryabkov, on Monday said the US strike “has to be seen as a continuation of America’s line to disregard the norms of international law”.



“What is this if not an act of aggression? It is, if you like, help to those terrorists that the US is fighting against, declaring they are carrying out an anti-terrorism policy,” he said.

The Pentagon insisted it was not seeking to escalate the conflict and had acted only after the Syrian jet in question had dropped bombs near US partner forces involved in the fight to wrest Raqqa from Isis control.



“We made every effort to warn those individuals not to come any closer and then the commander made a judgment that it was a threat to the forces that we are supporting and took action,” Dunford said.

Col John Thomas, a spokesman for US Central Command, said there were no US forces in the immediate vicinity but that the SDF was under threat for more than two hours.



The SDF, an alliance of Kurdish and Arab fighters working alongside western special forces, said it would take action to defend itself from Syrian warplanes if attacks continued.

The tensions between Washington and Moscow over efforts to dislodge Isis from its Raqqa stronghold are a long way from Trump’s plan to work with Russia in Syria to defeat the terror group. </s> Russia on Monday angrily condemned the downing of a Syrian aircraft by a U.S. fighter as a "flagrant violation of international law," and said its forces will treat U.S.-led coalition aircraft and drones as targets if they are operating in Syrian airspace west of the Euphrates in areas while Russian aviation is on combat missions.

The Russian defense ministry also said it is suspending an agreement to minimize the risk of in-flight incidents between Russian and U.S.-led coalition aircraft operating over Syria.

Russia, which has provided military support to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad since 2015, was reacting to U.S. military confirmation that a U.S. F-18 Super Hornet shot down a Syrian SU-22 fighter-bomber on Sunday. The Syrian jet had just dropped bombs near forces known as the Syrian Democratic Forces, which are aligned with the U. S. military in the campaign against the Islamic State.

Meanwhile, U.S.-backed opposition fighters said that Assad's forces have been attacking their positions in the northern Raqqa province, and warned that they would take action if the attacks continue.

On Monday, the Russian defense ministry said that its warplanes had been in operation in the area of the encounter between the U.S. and Syrian jets, and said that the coalition had not used the deconflicting hotline to warn the Russian jet.

"Multiple military actions of U.S. aviation under the guise of fighting terrorism against the legal military of a state that is a member of the United Nations are a flagrant violation of international law and constitute de facto military aggression against the Syrian Arab Republic," the ministry said.

"We view these actions by the American command as a conscious failure to neglect their responsibilities within the memorandum," the ministry said.

Russia briefly suspended the 2015 memorandum of understanding on the air operations after U.S. forces fired Tomahawk missiles at a Syrian air base in April.

Also on Monday, a senior Russian diplomat warned that the downing of the Syrian jet was "yet another step in a direct and dangerous escalation."

"We are warning Washington not to take such actions in the future," Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov told the Interfax news agency.

The confrontation took place late Sunday near the central city of Tabqa, hours after Syrian government forces harassed a U.S.-backed local ground force with airstrikes.

It was the first time that the American military has shot down a Syrian warplane during the six-year conflict, and followed a series of U.S. airstrikes against Iran-backed forces advancing on partner forces in a strategically-prized swathe of land along the Iraqi border.

Outside observers said that Sunday's strike underscored a growing willingness on the part of Assad's forces to confront the U.S.-led coalition as they jostle to roll back Islamic State militants from eastern Syria.

That effort has been bolstered by the freeing up of thousands of Shiite militias that had fought in a campaign across the border to capture the city of Mosul from Islamic State militants.

"The wild card here is the logic of an Assad regime which has decided that it no longer wants to be constrained to a western Syria-based statelet," said Nicholas A. Heras, a fellow at the Washington-based Center for a New American Security.

That shift has been driven by an assessment that the Trump's administration could use the territory its forces capture as a bargaining chip with which to push Assad into a political transition or Syria into a decentralized political system, Heras added.

In Moscow, officials argued that Sunday's shoot-down was intended as a message aimed squarely at them.

Franz Klintsevich, deputy head of the defense and security committee of the Russian upper house of parliament, called the incident "an aggression and a provocation" directed at Russia.

"It looks like Donald Trumps' United States is a source of a brand-new danger both in the Middle East and the world at large," Klintsevich wrote on his Facebook page.

Another member of the upper house, Alexei Pushkov, tweeted that the incident was "a new act of war" against the Syrian government.

The upper house, the Federation Council, is a largely toothless body that essentially carries out Putin's policies with little opposition.

The reaction of Russia's foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, was more muted. Russia's top diplomat said that the United States should show respect Syria's territorial integrity and that any actions on the ground "should be coordinated with Damascus."

"We call on the United States and all others who have their forces or their advisers 'on the ground' to ensure coordination in our work," the official Russian Tass news agency quoted Lavrov as saying at a meeting with the foreign ministers of Brazil, India and China in Beijing.

Putin last week said that Syria has proven to be a useful testing ground for advanced Russian weapons systems.

"It has done enormous good for our defense industry," Putin told Russians in his annual televised call-in show. "I can say that the experience our armed forces have gained under combat conditions, especially with the use of cutting-edge weapons, is invaluable." </s> WASHINGTON — Russia’s defense ministry says it will treat U.S.-led coalition planes in Syria, west of the Euphrates River, as targets after the U.S. military shot down a Syrian Air Force jet on Sunday.

Moscow has condemned the U.S. downing of the Syrian government fighter jet after it dropped bombs nears U.S. partner forces.

The Russian defense ministry says in a statement that, starting Monday, it will track all jets and drones of the U.S.-led coalition west of the Euphrates and treat them as targets.

The ministry also called on the U.S. military to provide a full account of why it decided to shoot down the Syrian SU-22.

The United States and Russia, which has been providing an air cover for Syria’s President Bashar Assad since 2015 in his offensive against the Islamic State group, have a standing agreement that should prevent in-the-air incidents involving U.S. and Russia jets engaged in operations in Syria.

The Russian defense ministry said that it was suspending the deal after the U.S. military confirmed that it downed a Syrian Air Force fighter jet on Sunday after it dropped bombs near U.S. partner forces.

The ministry says it views the incident as Washington’s “deliberate failure to make good on its commitments” under the de-confliction deal.

Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov told Russian news agencies on Monday that the downing was akin to “helping the terrorists that the U.S. is fighting against.”

Ryabkov asks: “What is this, if not an act of aggression?” </s> The White House told Russia on Monday that it reserves 'the right to self defense' after the Kremlin warned it would track US-led coalition aircraft in Syria as potential 'targets' and halted an incident-prevention hotline with Washington after US forces downed a Syrian jet.

'I think that the escalation of hostilities among the many factions that are operating in this region doesn't help anybody,' White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer said 'and the Syrian regime and the others in the regime need to understand that we will retain the right to self defense of coalition forces aligned against ISIS.'

Spicer told a reporter later that he was not saying the US is on the brink of war with Russia amid an escalation in tensions that came after the Syrian government attacked a US-backed group that is fighting ISIS.

The US says an SU-22 operated by the Syrian regime was dropping bombs on the Syrian Democratic Forces when it was shot out of the sky by a U.S. F/A-18E Super Hornet.

The United States moved quickly to contain the situation on Monday, with a top general saying Washington would work to relaunch the 'deconfliction' hotline with Russia that was established in 2015.

A Pentagon official told Russia that it would not back down, however, after Russia threatened to make US planes its targets.

'We do not seek conflict with any party in Syria other than ISIS, but we will not hesitate to defend ourselves or our partners if threatened,' Pentagon spokesman Capt. Jeff Davis told Fox News.

The downing of the jet and Russia's response came as the US-led coalition and allied fighters battle to oust the Islamic State jihadist group from its Syrian bastion Raqqa.

Analysts say neither Washington nor President Bashar al-Assad's regime appear to be seeking further confrontation, although the risks remain high in Syria's increasingly crowded battlefields and airspace.

Russia's foreign ministry accused Washington of failing to use the hotline before downing the plane near Raqqa, and called for a 'careful investigation by the US command' into the incident.

'Any flying objects, including planes and drones of the international coalition, discovered west of the Euphrates River will be tracked as aerial targets by Russia's air defenses on and above ground,' it warned.

At a press conference on Monday, Davis said the countries were still speaking to each other about their operations.

'I'm confident that we are still communicating between our operations center and the Russia federation operations center,' he said. 'And I'm also confident that our forces have the capability to take care of themselves.'

Department of Defense spokesperson Major Adrian JT Rankine-Galloway promised that coalition aircraft would not be cowed by Russia's threats.

He said they would continue conducting 'operations throughout Syria, targeting ISIS forces and providing air support for Coalition partner forces on the ground.'

'As a result of recent encounters involving pro-Syrian Regime and Russian forces, we have taken prudent measures to re-position aircraft over Syria so as to continue targeting ISIS forces while ensuring the safety of our aircrew given known threats in the battlespace,' he said.

The area west of the Euphrates - as well as much of the country - is covered by Russia's 'Growler' anti-aircraft defense system, which has a range of 250 miles and can hit targets up to an altitude of 90,000 feet.

The system has been deployed on the Latakia Airbase on the Syrian coast; Russia has been providing air cover for Assad's troops since 2015.

'We will work diplomatically and militarily in the coming hours to re-establish deconfliction,' said US General Joe Dunford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, referring to the hotline.

Dunford noted that the hotline, which has been vital in protecting both US and Russian forces operating in Syria, remained in use 'over the last few hours'.

The Syrian jet was shot down on Sunday evening after regime forces engaged the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), an alliance of Arab and Kurdish fighters battling IS, near Raqqa.

An American F/A-18E Super Hornet shot down the Syrian SU-22 as it 'dropped bombs near SDF fighters' south of the town of Tabqa, the coalition said in a statement.

Russia's defense minister said the pilot ejected 'above IS-controlled territories' and that his fate is unknown.

Earlier Sunday, Syrian troops attacked the SDF near Tabqa, wounding several and chasing them out of town, the coalition said.

It said the warplane was shot down in line with the 'rules of engagement'.

But Damascus and regime ally Moscow condemned the 'aggression'.

The Syrian army said the plane was hit while 'conducting a mission against the terrorist Islamic State group' and warned of 'the grave consequences of this flagrant aggression'.

Russia's deputy foreign minister Sergei Ryabkov said it was a 'continuation of America's line to disregard the norms of international law'.

'What is this if not an act of aggression?'

It was the latest skirmish between the coalition and regime forces in the increasingly tense and crowded space in Syria's north and east.

The coalition backs SDF forces in their months-long bid to capture Raqqa, an operation in which the regime has not been involved.

The SDF entered Raqqa for the first time earlier this month and now holds four neighbourhoods in the east and west of the city.

Syria's army has instead turned its focus further east, to the largely IS-held oil-rich province of Deir Ezzor, where regime forces are besieged in part of the provincial capital.

It is advancing towards the region on three fronts, south of Raqqa, through the Badia desert region in central Syria, and along the eastern border.

But the advances have created conflict with the coalition, particularly along Syria's border, where the US and its allies are training an anti-IS force at the Al-Tanaf garrison.

Earlier this month, the coalition fired on pro-regime ground forces who approached the garrison and shot down a pro-regime armed drone.

Russia halted the hotline only once before, after an April 7 US cruise missile strike on a Syrian regime airbase in retaliation for a suspected chemical weapons attack that killed dozens of civilians.

Sam Heller, a Syria expert at The Century Foundation think-tank, said the regime was provoking confrontations, but neither side appeared to want a major escalation.

'I think that it was just that the regime engaged in a provocation and then a lower-rung US commander responded in self-defence,' he said of Sunday's incident.

'The regime got too close and it got burned.'

But provocations by Syria's government and its allies were a potentially risky strategy, he said.

'It doesn't look like anyone currently intends to deliberately escalate further, but when you've got these little skirmishes... the risk is that you can end up in an escalation by accident.'

On Monday morning, the area where the regime and SDF fighters clashed was quiet and the US-backed alliance was continuing to battle IS inside Raqqa, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitor said.

Government forces meanwhile seized the town of Rusafa, south of Raqqa, a key stop on its path to Deir Ezzor and located near provincial oil and gas fields, it added.

Syria's war began in March 2011 with anti-government protests, but has since spiralled into a complex and bloody conflict that has killed more than 320,000 people.

Syria's rebels are now on the back foot after regime advances with support from allies Russia and Iran.

On Sunday, Tehran for the first time fired missiles from its territory against IS positions in Deir Ezzor.

It said the missiles were 'in retaliation' for June 7 attacks in Tehran on the parliament complex and shrine of revolutionary leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini that killed 17 people and was claimed by IS.

On the diplomatic front, a fresh round of Syria peace talks in Kazakhstan's capital Astana has been scheduled for July 4-5, the Kazakh foreign ministry said. </s> MOSCOW — Warplanes from the U.S.-led coalition operating over Syrian government-controlled areas west of the Euphrates River will be tracked as potential targets, Russia’s Defense Ministry said Monday, a day after the U.S. military shot down a Syrian air force jet.

Moscow condemned the downing of the Syrian jet after it dropped bombs near the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces that are fighting the Islamic State group in Syria’s increasingly complicated civil war.

The downing of the warplane — the first time in the conflict that the U.S. has shot down a Syrian jet — came as Iran fired several ballistic missiles at IS positions in eastern Syria in retaliation for two attacks by the extremists in Tehran earlier this month that killed 17 people.

Areas of northern Syria west of the Euphrates were controlled by IS before Syrian government forces captured most of them in recent months. The Russians appear to want to avoid further U.S. targeting of Syrian warplanes or ground troops that have come under U.S. attack in eastern Syria recently.

Moscow also called on the U.S. military to provide a full accounting of why it decided to shoot down the Syrian Su-22.

Russia, a key ally of Syrian President Bashar Assad, has been providing an air cover to the government’s offensive since 2015.

But in April, Russia briefly suspended a hotline intended to prevent midair incidents with the U.S. over Syria after the American military fired 59 missiles at a Syrian air base following a chemical weapons attack that Washington blamed on the Assad government.

The U.S. military confirmed that one of its F-18 Super Hornets shot down a Syrian Su-22 that had dropped bombs near the U.S. partner forces SDF. Those forces, which are aligned with the U.S. in the campaign against the Islamic State group, warned Syrian government troops to stop their attacks or face retaliation.

In comments to Russian news agencies, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov compared the downing to “helping the terrorists that the U.S. is fighting against.”

“What is this, if not an act of aggression?” he asked.

Viktor Ozerov, chairman of the defense and security committee at the upper chamber of Russian parliament, described the Defense Ministry’s statement as a warning.

“I’m sure that because of this neither the U.S. nor anyone else will take any actions to threaten our aircraft,” he told the state-owned RIA Novosti news agency. “That’s why there’s no threat of direct confrontation between Russia and American aircraft.”

Ozerov insisted that Russia will be tracking the coalition’s jets, not shooting them down, but he added that “a threat for those jets may appear only if they take action that pose a threat to Russian aircraft.”

Meanwhile, the U.S.-backed opposition fighters said Assad’s forces have been attacking them in the northern province of Raqqa and warned that if such attacks continue, the fighters will take action.

Clashes between Syrian troops and the SDF would escalate tensions and open a new front line in the many complex battlefields of the civil war, now in its seventh year. Clashes between the Kurdish-led SDF and Syrian forces have been rare and some rebel groups have even accused them of coordinating on the battlefield.

Both sides are battling the Islamic State group, with SDF fighters focusing on their march into the northern city of Raqqa, which the extremist group has declared to be its capital.

Government forces have also been attacking IS in northern, central and southern Syria, seizing 25,000 square kilometers (9,600 square miles) and reaching the Iraqi border for the first time in years.

SDF spokesman Talal Sillo said the government wants to thwart the SDF offensive to capture Raqqa. He said government forces began attacking SDF on Saturday, using warplanes, artillery and tanks in areas that SDF had liberated from IS.

Sillo also warned that if “the regime continues in its offensive against our positions in Raqqa province, this will force us to retaliate with force.”

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which tracks Syria’s war, said government forces expanded their presence in Raqqa province by capturing from IS the town of Rasafa.

Iran’s launch of its ballistic missiles against IS hit Syria’s eastern city of Deir el-Zour on Sunday night and was its first such strike in the conflict. Previously, it has been providing crucial support to Assad’s forces.

Iran’s powerful Revolutionary Guard said it launched six Zolfaghar ballistic missiles from the western provinces of Kermanshah and Kurdistan. Video on Iranian state TV showed the weapons on truck missile launchers in the daylight before the nighttime volley.

The missiles flew over Iraq before striking what the Guard called an IS command center and suicide car bomb operation in Deir el-Zour, over 600 kilometers (370 miles) away. The extremists have been trying to fortify their positions in the Syrian city in the face of a coalition onslaught on Raqqa.

Syrian opposition activist Omar Abu Laila said two Iranian missiles fell in and near the eastern town of Mayadeen, an IS stronghold. There were casualties, said Abu Laila, who is originally from Deir el-Zour and currently lives in Germany, where he runs a website about the province.

The Islamic State group did not immediately acknowledge the attack. Iraqi lawmaker Abdul-Bari Zebari said his country agreed to the missile overflight after coordination with Iran, Russia and Syria.

Mroue reported from Beirut. Associated Press writers Nasser Karimi in Tehran and Jon Gambrell in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, contributed. </s> A Russian military jet carrying 14 servicemen vanished from radar over the Mediterranean Sea late Monday as Syria came under attack by Israeli missiles, the defence ministry said.

“Connection has been lost with the crew of a Russian Il-20 plane over the Mediterranean Sea 35 kilometres from the Syrian coast as it was returning to the Hmeimim airbase,” the Russian defence ministry said early Tuesday.

The fate of the military personnel is “unknown,” the ministry said in a statement which was carried by Russian news agencies. A search for the plane was underway.

A search-and-rescue source told the Interfax news agency that the Russian warplane could have sunk in the Mediterranean Sea as a result of an “unforeseen critical incident” in the air.

The ministry said that the jet had gone off the radar around 11pm Monday (local time) during an attack by four Israeli F-16 jets over Syrian infrastructure in the province of Latakia, a stronghold of president Bashar al-Assad.

RIA Novosti news agency, citing a security source, said that Syrian anti-defence systems had countered a rocket attack.

There was no immediate comment from the Syrian government.

An Israeli military spokeswoman when asked about both the reported Israeli strike and the Russian plane said: “We don’t comment on foreign reports.”

A Pentagon spokesman said the United States was not involved and declined to provide further details.

“The missiles were not fired by the US military and we have nothing further at this time,” he said.

The Russian defence ministry also said that rockets had been launched from the French Navy’s frigate, The Auvergne, which was in the area at the time.

“The French army denies any involvement in this attack,” a French army spokesman said.

The jet vanished from radar just hours after Russia said there would be no assault against Syria’s Idlib as the presidents of Russia and Turkey agreed to create a “demilitarised zone” in the rebel-held province.

After more than four hours of talks with Russian president Vladimir Putin at his residence in the Black Sea resort of Sochi, Turkish leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan said their two countries would “prevent a humanitarian tragedy.”

Putin said the two leaders agreed to create a 15-20 kilometre-wide demilitarised zone along the line of contact between rebels and regime troops by October 15.

This would entail a “withdrawal of all radical fighters” from Idlib including the Al-Nusra Front and also the withdrawal of heavy weaponry including tanks, multiple launch rocket systems, Putin said.

Russia-backed forces of the Syrian regime have massed around Idlib province in recent weeks, sparking fears of an imminent air and ground attack to retake the last major opposition bastion.

Russia intervened in the Syrian conflict to buttress the Assad regime in 2015.

Russia has previously lost aircraft during its Syria campaign.

In November 2015, Turkey shot down a Russian warplane near the Syrian border, triggering a severe crisis in ties with Moscow. </s> A Russian military jet carrying 14 servicemen vanished from radar over the Mediterranean Sea late Monday as Syria came under attack by Israeli missiles, the defence ministry said.

"Connection has been lost with the crew of a Russian Il-20 plane over the Mediterranean Sea 35 kilometres from the Syrian coast as it was returning to the Hmeimim airbase," the Russian defence ministry said early Tuesday.

The fate of the military personnel is "unknown," the ministry said in a statement which was carried by Russian news agencies. A search for the plane was underway.

A search-and-rescue source told the Interfax news agency that the Russian warplane could have sunk in the Mediterranean Sea as a result of an "unforeseen critical incident" in the air.

The ministry said that the jet had gone off the radar around 11pm Monday (2000 GMT) during an attack by four Israeli F-16 jets over Syrian infrastructure in the province of Latakia, a stronghold of President Bashar al-Assad.

RIA Novosti news agency, citing a security source, said that Syrian anti-defence systems had countered a rocket attack.

There was no immediate comment from the Syrian government.

An Israeli military spokeswoman when asked about both the reported Israeli strike and the Russian plane said: "We don't comment on foreign reports."

A Pentagon spokesman said the United States was not involved and declined to provide further details.

"The missiles were not fired by the US military and we have nothing further at this time," he said.

The Russian defence ministry also said that rockets had been launched from the French Navy's frigate, The Auvergne, which was in the area at the time.

"The French army denies any involvement in this attack," a French army spokesman said.

The jet vanished from radar just hours after Russia said there would be no assault against Syria's Idlib as the presidents of Russia and Turkey agreed to create a "demilitarised zone" in the rebel-held province.

After more than four hours of talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin at his residence in the Black Sea resort of Sochi, Turkish leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan said their two countries would "prevent a humanitarian tragedy."

Putin said the two leaders agreed to create a 15-20 kilometre-wide demilitarised zone along the line of contact between rebels and regime troops by October 15.

This would entail a "withdrawal of all radical fighters" from Idlib including the Al-Nusra Front and also the withdrawal of heavy weaponry including tanks, multiple launch rocket systems, Putin said.

Russia-backed forces of the Syrian regime have massed around Idlib province in recent weeks, sparking fears of an imminent air and ground attack to retake the last major opposition bastion.

Russia intervened in the Syrian conflict to buttress the Assad regime in 2015.

Russia has previously lost aircraft during its Syria campaign.

In November 2015, Turkey shot down a Russian warplane near the Syrian border, triggering a severe crisis in ties with Moscow.
After yesterday's downing of a Syrian Su-22 jet, Russia shuts down a deconfliction channel and says it will follow any aircraft west of the Euphrates as a target.