IS fighters shoot down Syrian war plane

BEIRUT, Sept 16 (agencies): Islamic State fighters shot down a Syrian war plane using anti-aircraft guns on Tuesday, the first time the group has downed a military jet since declaring its cross-border caliphate in June, a group monitoring the civil war said.
The plane came down outside Islamic State's stronghold of Raqqa city, 400 km (250 miles) northeast of Damascus, during air strikes on territory controlled by the group, a resident said.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a monitoring group which gathers information from a network of activists on the ground, reported five air raids on Raqqa on Tuesday. Rami Abdulrahman, who runs the organisation, cited sources close to Islamic State as saying the plane had been shot down.
US President Barack Obama last week authorised air strikes against Islamic State in Syria, potentially widening action against a group already being targeted by US air strikes in Iraq.
The Syrian air force has been bombing Islamic State-controlled territory in the provinces of Raqqa and Deir al-Zor on a near-daily basis since the group seized the Iraqi city of Mosul in June.
Syria has offered to join a coalition the United States is assembling to fight Islamic State, but Western governments see President Bashar al-Assad as part of the problem and have ruled out the idea of such cooperation.
Jihadists shot down a Syrian warplane conducting strikes on the Islamic State group stronghold of Raqa on Tuesday, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group said.
"IS fighters fired on a military aircraft which crashed," the Britain-based group said.
"It is the first aircraft shot down since the regime launched air strikes against the jihadists in July following their declaration of a caliphate in late June," said the group, which relies on a wide network of doctors and activists for its reports.
Observatory director Rami Abdel Rahman told AFP that the plane was carrying out strikes on the IS stronghold of Raqa when it was hit.
It crashed into a house in the Euphrates Valley city, the sole provincial capital entirely out of Syrian government control, causing deaths and injuries on the ground, he added.
A photograph posted on a jihadist Twitter account purported to show the burnt-out wreckage of the plane.
"Allahu Akbar (God is greater), thanks to God we can confirm that a military aircraft has been shot down over Raqa," another account said, congratulating the "lions of the Islamic State."
The plane is far from the first Syrian government aircraft downed by opposition forces, but it comes after President Bashar al-Assad's regime stepped up its air campaign against IS in eastern Syria.
In recent weeks it has repeatedly targeted the group's Euphrates valley strongholds in Raqa and Deir Ezzor provinces and jihadist-held areas of the northeastern province of Hasakeh.
An air strike on an IS training camp in the Deir Ezzor town of Tibni killed 17 militants and a child on Saturday.
US President Barack Obama announced last week he had authorised the expansion to Syria of the air campaign against IS that he launched in neighbouring Iraq in early August.