Iranian airliner drops altitude after approached by US fighter jet over Syria

American fighter aircraft approached an Iranian passenger plane over Syria on Thursday, a US military official said, an incident that Iranian media said prompted the pilot to abruptly drop altitude and triggered panic aboard. Iran’s Fars News and the state-run Syrian Arab News Agency reported that the Iranian Mahan Air plane was flying above the Tanf area of eastern Syria, where a U.S. military base is located, when two jets approached, identifying themselves by radio as American. The pilot responded by dropping the aircraft to avoid collision, the official Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting news agency said. Videos circulating on social media showed Arabic and Farsi speakers aboard the plane, some of them suffering injuries. One video showed the plane seemingly suddenly dropping as women screamed in the background. Another featured a Farsi-speaking man who suffered a head injury that marked his face with a thin line of blood. F-15 jet was on a “routine air mission” near the Tanf garrison, an isolated outpost, when it “conducted a standard visual inspection of a Mahan Air passenger airliner at a safe distance of approximately 1,000 meters from the airliner.” “Once the F-15 pilot identified the aircraft as a Mahan Air passenger plane, the F-15 safely opened distance from the aircraft. The professional intercept was conducted in accordance with international standards,” Urban said in a statement.<br/>