The US military said it had shot down an armed, Iranian-made drone that had been bearing down on its forces near a garrison in Syria's south-east on Tuesday, in the latest sign of increasingly frequent confrontation with Damascus and its allies.
On Sunday, a U.S. F-18 Super Hornet shot down a Syrian government SU-22 drone after it dropped bombs near troops from the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), which are now moving towards Raqqah, Daesh's Syrian stronghold.
Australia on Tuesday suspended its airstrikes against Islamic State targets in Syria as a precaution, after Russian Federation announced that it was suspending the hotline and warned the USA -led coalition not to fly over Syrian army positions west of the Euphrates River.
On Sunday, for the first time during the conflict in Syria, the USA shot down a Syrian jet near Raqqa after the aircraft dropped bombs near the US -allied Syrian Democratic Forces, a group that is battling the Islamic State.
Following the downing of a Syrian warplane on Sunday by U.S. forces, Russia, which is a close ally of Syrian President Bashar Assad warned that planes flying west of the Euphrates River will be "air targets".
The US has about 1,000 military personnel in northern Syria, where it has been supplying and supporting partnered forces in their fight in the ISIS-stronghold of Raqqa.
The military said Binali was killed in Mayadeen, an IS-held Syrian town near the Iraqi border. In a statement, the Syrian military described the downing of its plane as an act of "blatant aggression" on the part of the United States and accused the USA of coordinating with ISIS.
Military officials who spoke to CNN described it as a Shahed 129, a model unveiled by Iran in 2012.
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It was an Iranian-made Shahed 129 and was thought to be armed and in firing range of United States troops.
A defense official familiar with the incident said the Russian aircraft came alongside the RC-135 and made some unpredictable and erratic maneuvers, at one point flying underneath the reconnaissance aircraft.
Iran's Revolutionary Guard says all six ballistic missiles it launched at Islamic State militants in Syria earlier this week hit their targets. The truce was meant to be extended but now appears to have collapsed.
Still, the Pentagon said it had not seen hostile action by Moscow.
The U.S. military has repeatedly warned forces fighting on Assad's side to stay away from a "deconfliction zone", agreed with Russian Federation, near a garrison used by U.S. special forces and U.S. -backed militia around Al Tanf.
Iran says it attacked IS fighters in eastern Syria with long-range missiles on Sunday.
The Syrian government forces' march toward the Jordanian border comes two weeks after they reached the border with Iraq for the first time in years.
Information for this article was contributed by Thomas Gibbons-Neff and Louisa Loveluck of The Washington Post; by Zeina Karam, Robert Burns, Bassem Mroue, Rod McGuirk, Albert Aji and Nasser Karimi of The Associated Press; and by Michael R. Gordon of The New York Times.
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