A Turkish backed rebel group in Syria has moments ago shot down a Russian fighter jet and murdered the pilot who had ejected. The Sukhoi-25, which is a close-support ground-attack aircraft, can be seen going down whilst rebel fighters are commenting joyfully.
<blockquote class="twitter-video" data-lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Footage from the Russian plane that downed by the rebels in <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/Idlib?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#Idlib</a> area. Moscow not commented so far <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/Syria?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#Syria</a> <a href="https://t.co/iYpR70S4hp">pic.twitter.com/iYpR70S4hp</a></p>— Guy Elster (@guyelster) <a href="https://twitter.com/guyelster/status/959812295928045568?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">February 3, 2018</a></blockquote>
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Russian air force losses have been rare since it began its Syria campaign in September 2015 and the fact that one of their pilots is shown killed by the jihadis, you can imagine the reaction from Moscow will be swift, certainly with President Putin up for re-election soon. So far Russia has not yet reacted to the news.
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The fighter claiming to have shot down the Russian Su-25 jet are part of the Islamist group, Jaysh Al-Nasr.
Important, there are claims circulating that Jaysh Al-Nasr was previously armed with anti-tank missiles by the US military; they are allied with jihadist groups like Hay’at Tahrir Al-Sham and Harakat Ahrar Al-Sham.
Russia has acted alongside its Syrian allies targeting rebels in the area.
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