On Saturday night, a flurry of missiles were fired at the Damascus airport, doing “substantial damage.” The Syrian government has attributed the attacks to Israel, and says air defense systems shot down several missiles.
Israel has refused to confirm or deny the attack, which is in keeping with Israel’s typical response to its many, many attacks on Syria. The missiles targeted a cargo plane and several storage rooms at the site of the airport.
The Syrian Observatory was quick to label all of these Iranian weapons, claiming the cargo plane was Iranian in origin and “full” of weapons, while the rooms, which were labeled as belonging to the DHL shipping company, were claimed to belong to either Iran or Hezbollah.
This is in keeping with the common Israeli talking points about why they attack Syria, but there is as yet no conclusive proof on what was actually present at the site of the strike, beyond it being an airport and a plane.
That’s the new ticket – aggressors just deny everything.
It now appears the defensive firing also shot down a Russian 4-engine transport, an Il-20, with 14 souls on board. If the US or Israel had suffered such collateral damage from a Russian strike, there would be a lot more fighting about it.
I think the IL-20 that was taken is actually an electronic surveillance and airborne early warning type aircraft.
That (the Coot-A) or an airborne command post aircraft (Coot-B).
It would be odd if such specialized aircraft were not tied in to the local air defenses. It is what they do.