The U.S. military says it shot down an Iranian-made, armed drone in southern Syria.
"The armed pro-regime Shaheed-129 UAV was shot down by a U.S. F-15E Strike Eagle at approximately 12:30 a.m. after it displayed hostile intent and advanced on coalition forces", according to a statement issued by Operation Inherent Resolve, the US -led coalition fighting ISIS.
One official said that the drone was shot down because it was "assessed to be a threat".
Australia's military is suspending the airstrikes that it had been carrying out against the Islamic State as part of a US -led coalition in Syria, one day after Russian Federation criticized the USA downing of a Syrian warplane and threatened to target coalition aircraft in a wide swath of Syria.
The U.S. said it had downed the Syrian jet a day earlier after it dropped bombs near the U.S. -backed Syrian Democratic Forces conducting operations against the Islamic State group, adding that was something it would not tolerate. Iran is particularly concerned with US influence inside Syria, despite American insistence that its presence in Syria is focused on defeating ISIS.
Russia, which is allied with the Syrian regime and has acted as its intermediary with the USA, declared on Monday that it would now consider any aircraft west of the Euphrates River in Syria a target and announced it was shutting down a hotline with the U.S.to deconflict its air forces over Syria.
A spokesman for the Guard, Gen. Ramazan Sharif, said all six ballistic missiles hit their targets, citing "local sources" and drone footage.
"The chance for a catastrophic error is higher now than ever before in the six-year-old civil war", USA -based intelligence advisory firm The Soufan Group noted Tuesday.
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Coalition troops were working in the area alongside local forces who are being trained to fight the so-called Islamic State group. The 48-hour truce that had started there at noon Saturday was supposed to be extended.
The official was not authorized to be quoted by name and spoke on condition of anonymity.
"The situation is back as it was in Daraa city and fighting is ongoing", said Daraa-based opposition activist Ahmad al-Masalmeh.
With the skies over Syria growing increasingly crowded, a statement from the Australian Defense Department released in the capital, Canberra, said that "Australian Defense Force protection is regularly reviewed in response to a range of potential threats". "The regime made the truce and then violated it".
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said government forces pushed on Tuesday into some rebel-held areas in Daraa, as well as its western outskirts. It said government helicopters dropped 55 barrel bombs on Daraa while warplanes carried out about 20 airstrikes.
The incident comes amid rising tensions between coalition forces and the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, which is backed by Russian Federation and Iran. The crisis quickly became a civil war, which has since left at least 400,000 people dead.
Daraa is where Syria's crisis first broke out in March 2011 as an uprising against Assad's government.
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