A Syrian air force pilot was captured by Islamist rebels after his plane crashed near Damascus, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said on Friday.
The aircraft crashed in the mountainous region of Qalamun, northwest of the Syrian capital, the Britain-based monitoring group said.
“It is not known whether it crashed due to a technical fault or it was hit by rebels,” Observatory head Rami Abdel Rahman told AFP.
The pilot ejected himself and landed near the town of Jayrud, 60 kilometres northeast of Damascus, he added.
Nusrat Al-Mazlum, a small group of Islamist rebels, captured the pilot and handed him over to another group, said Abdel Rahman, who was not able to identify the second group. The Saudi-backed rebel group Jaysh al-Islam (Army of Islam), which controls areas east of Damascus, claimed it had hit the plane — identified as a Russian-made Sukhoi Su-22 — and captured the pilot.