(AP Photo/Pavel Golovkin, FILE)

A Russian reconnaissance aircraft was shot down by a Syrian missile over the Mediterranean Sea, killing all 15 people on board, the Russian Defence Ministry said Tuesday. READ MORE: Russian military plane disappears over Syria, U.S. official says Syrians shot it by error

“The Israeli pilots were using the Russian aircraft as a shield and pushed it into the line of fire of the Syrian defense,” Ministry spokesman Maj. Gen. Igor Konashenkov said in a statement. “An Israeli jet did not shoot down our plane.”

– ‘Tragic miscalculation’ –

 US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said also expressed “sorrow” over the Russian deaths, and said it showed “the danger of tragic miscalculation in Syria’s crowded theatre of operations.”

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said some missiles, suspected to be Israeli, did get through the Syrian defences and struck ammunition depots at the site of the technical industries institute. Russia has been a key backer of Syrian President Bashar Assad and it has two military bases in the country, including one close to the Mediterranean coast. Turkey’s troops are also on the ground in northern Syria and are patrolling the skies over the region as Ankara seeks to ramp up its influence there and curb the expansion of Syrian Kurdish-controlled territory. Israel has refrained from taking sides in the Syrian civil war. Israel said it had targeted a Syrian military facility where weapons manufacturing systems were “about to be transferred on behalf of Iran” to Lebanese Shiite group Hezbollah. READ MORE: Russia and Turkey agree on demilitarized zone in Syria’s Idlib

Israel has also acknowledged attacking Iranian targets some 200 times. Israel has warned that it will not allow Iran to establish a permanent military presence in postwar Syria. It sees Iran’s military presence in Syria as a threat, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told Putin by phone on Tuesday his forces would keep acting against it. Netanyahu frequently travels to Russia for talks with President Vladimir Putin to discuss the Syria issue. The Israeli military said the Russian plane fell victim to the “extensive and inaccurate” firing of Syrian surface-to-air missile systems and that the Israeli jets — which were carrying out a raid against a Syrian government facility in another place — had already left Syrian airspace by that point. Sima Shine, a former senior Mossad official and ex-deputy director-general at the Strategic Affairs Ministry, told Israel's Army Radio station that the shooting down is problematic both militarily and internally from a Russian perspective. “I think it will impose very serious restriction on Israel’s freedom of activity,” she said. The plane crashed only hours after the leaders of Russia and Turkey reached an agreement to avert an all-out offensive by Syrian government forces to retake Syria’s last remaining rebel stronghold in Idlib. Russian President Vladimir Putin, however, struck a reconciliatory note Tuesday, blaming the shooting down on “a chain of tragic circumstances.”

Asked about the Defense Ministry’s threat to respond to Israel’s actions, Putin said the Russian response will focus on boosting security for its troops in Syria. In Damascus, Syria’s foreign ministry welcomed the agreement, while vowing that it will continue the fight against “terrorism until liberating the last inch of the Syrian territory, whether through military operations or through local reconciliations.”

Iran also welcomed the agreement, with Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif tweeting: “Diplomacy works.”

Josef Federman and Ian Deitch in Jerusalem, Vladimir Isachenkov in Moscow and Bassem Mroue in Beirut contributed to this report.
News emerges that the Russian Ilyushin Il-20 aircraft with fourteen people on board, missing since Monday over the Mediterranean Sea, was shot down. Russia accuses Israel of not giving enough warning before launching its attacks, causing Syria to shoot the plane down.