An Airbus 320 passenger jet with 172 people on board was nearly shot down over the Syrian capital city of Damascus on Thursday morning, as Syrian missile defense systems activated to respond to an incoming Israeli attack on the Damascus airport.



Russian Defense Ministry officials suggested that they don’t think the incident was coincidental, but rather that the Israeli military is deliberately using passenger jets for cover while attacking Syrian targets.



Israel likely considers this a win-win strategy, because either Syria doesn’t contest attacking Israeli planes, letting them strike with impunity, or Syria accidentally hits a civilian plane and gets condemned internationally for that.



In the case of the Airbus, which was flying out of Tehran, Israeli F-16s were active in the air by the airport when it was hoping to land, and fired air-to-surface missiles at the airport. The civilian plane was escorted safely out of the area, and landed in Hmeimim Airbase, a base further west in use by Russian planes.



Israel’s attacks on Damascus that night were reported, with one monitor saying 23 people were believed killed. Israel has not commented so far, and probably won’t with Russia accusing them of endangering civilian planes.



Syrian state media confirmed the attacks, saying that their missile defense had intercepted a number of the Israeli missiles. State media did not appear to repeat Russian reports on the near-shootdown.



The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights suggested that the bulk of the slain in the Israeli attack were Iraqis from Jisr al-Baghdad, though a number of Syrian soldiers were also killed in an attack on their air defense system.



Author: Jason Ditz Jason Ditz is news editor of Antiwar.com. View all posts by Jason Ditz