BEIRUT—Islamic State militants shot down a Syrian warplane on Sunday as Syrian forces regained ground lost to the extremists following a U.S.-led airstrike that hit government forces the day before, state media said.
The U.S. military says it may have unintentionally struck Syrian troops while carrying out a raid against ISIS on Saturday. The incident has threatened an already fragile U.S. and Russian-brokered cease-fire that has largely held despite dozens of alleged violations on both sides.
The Syrian Foreign Ministry called the U.S.-led coalition airstrikes a “dangerous and blatant aggression against the Syrian Arab Republic and its army.”
The ministry’s statement, sent to the presidents of the United Nations and the U.N. Security Council, said American warplanes repeatedly attacked Syrian army positions on Saturday afternoon. It said the airstrikes were “on purpose and planned in advance,” and killed dozens of Syrian soldiers.
Russia’s military said it was told by the Syrian army that at least 62 soldiers were killed in the Deir el-Zour air raid and more than 100 wounded. The Russian air force has been carrying out strikes across Syria to bolster President Bashar Assad’s forces for nearly a year, and the two militaries work in close coordination.
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which relies on a network of activists inside Syria, said the U.S.-led coalition struck army positions in Tharda mountain and a nearby artillery division, killing 90 troops and wounding 110.
Russia said the United States was being obstructive and deceptive regarding the airstrike by coalition warplanes on the Syrian military position. A Foreign Ministry statement on Sunday said that in an emergency U.N. Security Council session called after the airstrike, the United States took “an unconstructive and indistinct position.”
The Americans “not only turned out to be unable to give an adequate explanation of what happened, but also tried, as is their custom, to turn everything upside down,” the statement said.
Earlier Sunday, the state-run SANA news agency quoted an unnamed military official as saying that dozens of ISIS fighters were killed in the offensive on Tharda mountain under the cover of Syrian airstrikes. IS had claimed that its fighters captured Tharda mountain, which overlooks the city’s government-controlled airport.
The Syrian military official said government troops had regained control of areas the extremists captured “as a result of the American aircraft aggression.”
State TV later reported that a Syrian warplane was shot down while carrying out attacks on ISIS militants in the Deir el-Zour province, adding that the pilot was killed. ISIS-linked media also reported the incident.
