The Al-Qaeda-affiliated Al-Nusra Front has killed a Syrian airforce pilot captured on Friday after his plane was shot down north of Damascus, according to a purported message from one of the country's main armed opposition factions.
"We were surprised that a fighter from the Al-Nusra Front should have killed the pilot after we shot down the aircraft," the Jaysh al-Islam group allegedly said in the online message.
"The pilot was killed despite their promises to hand him over to us for a possible exchange of prisoners with the Damascus regime," the message added.
Jaysh al-Islam had photographed the captured pilot after his jet was shot down in the Qalamoun area, the group said.
Twitter accounts close to Jaysh al-Islam named the pilot as Nawras Hassan and published photos of a man lying on the ground with a bloodied face wearing a Syrian military T-shirt.
The alleged Jaysh al-Islam message asked Al-Nusra and another armed opposition group, Ahrar al-Sham, to "clarify in writing what happened and to hand over the pilot's body."
Jaysh al-Islam and Ahrar al-Sham earlier on Twitter claimed the downing of the aircraft, a Russian-made Sukhoi 22, by their forces on the ground, Turkish state news agency Anadolu reported
The Syrian government claimed the warplane had crashed during a training flight due to a technical error.
It was not immediately possible to verify the authenticity of the purported message Jaysh al-Islam or the Twitter photographs.
