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By Jon Gambrell, Sam Mednick, Konstantin Toropin and Seung Min Kim

Dubai: A US fighter jet was shot down in Iran on Friday (April 3) and one crew member was rescued, officials said, the first aircraft downed since the war began nearly five weeks ago.

It marked a major escalation in the conflict just two days after President Donald Trump said in a national address that the US has “beaten and completely decimated Iran” and was “going to finish the job” and “we’re going to finish it very fast”.

The rescue occurred as the US military was conducting a search operation, a US official and an Israeli official said. Three people familiar also confirmed that a search had been underway. All spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitivity of the situation.

No official details were released. The number of crew on board and the whereabouts of any others were not immediately known.

The circumstances that downed the plane were at first unclear. But in an email from the Pentagon obtained by the Associated Press, the US military said it received notification of “an aircraft being shot down” in West Asia, without providing more details.

The jet being shot down happened as Iran also fired on targets across West Asia, keeping the pressure on Israel and its Gulf Arab neighbours, despite US and Israeli insistence that Iran’s military capabilities have been all but destroyed.

Iran’s attacks on Gulf energy infrastructure and its tight grip on the Strait of Hormuz, through which a fifth of the........

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