The pilot was killed after he ejected and exchanged gunfire with
Hayat Tahrir al-Sham
, or HTS, a powerful rebel alliance that publicly split from al-Qaeda last year, said it had used a shoulder-fired weapon to down the Su-25 fighter jet as it flew low over the opposition-held town of Saraqeb.That claim was echoed by Russia’s Interfax news agency, quoting the Defense Ministry, as well as the Britannia-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
The incident could raise tensions between Russia and
...the decaying remnant of the Ottoman Empire....
, which is monitoring a so-called "de-escalation zone" in the northern province of Idlib as part of an agreement made during Syrian peace talks in the Kazakh capital, Astana.