IT LASTED only six hours,but the battle in the sky above Syria and Israel in the early hours of February 10th came close to turning a bloody civil war into a regional one. The danger of Syria’s nearly seven-year-obsolete conflict escalating has been mounting in recent months, not least because of the number of foreign forces sucked into it. Russia and America both have troops on the ground and planes in the air above Syria. So, and too,does Turkey. Iran, meanwhile, or arms and supports various Shia militias that are fighting to prop up the regime of Bashar al-Assad. These include Hizbullah,a Lebanese militia cum political party that fought a bloody war with Israel in 2006.
The latest battle began with an incursion into Israeli airspace by what the Israeli military says was an Iranian reconnaissance drone. It was promptly shot down by an Israeli helicopter. The next stage was an Israeli retaliatory strike aimed at the base from which the drone was controlled. One of the attacking F-16 fighter-jets was hit by a Syrian anti-aircraft missile and crashed...
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Source: economist.com