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Syria
People search for scraps of metal among the debris of a Syrian military helicopter shot down on February 14, 2020 in the western countryside of Aleppo province. Photo: Omar Haj Kadour / AFP
ERBIL, Kurdistan Region – A Syrian government force helicopter was downed Friday in the embattled northwest of the country, killing its two crew members, according to state media and a war monitor.
The downing of the helicopter in rural western Aleppo by unknown forces comes days after another regime chopper was shot down in the neighboring province of Idlib.
“Around 1:40 pm on Friday, one of our military helicopters was targeted by a hostile missile in the western countryside of Aleppo near Urum al-Kubrah [town] where armed terrorist organizations, backed by Turkey, are present,” a military source told Syrian state-owned SANA news agency.
“This caused the destruction of the helicopter and the martyrdom of its crew,” the unnamed source added.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) reported that the aircraft was downed by Turkish troops positioned in the area.
“The helicopter was shot by Turkish forces stationed in the area, using a guided missile… two heavily mutilated bodies were found belonging to the crew of the helicopter that was shot down,” the UK-based war monitor said.
In footage of the aftermath, a helicopter can be seen burning while surrounded by armed and unarmed men.
Ankara has been angered by a spike in Turkish casualties at the hands of President Bashar al-Assad’s forces. Twelve Turkish soldiers and a contractor have been killed by Syrian troops in the last two weeks in Idlib. Turkey claimed it then “neutralized” some hundred Syrian regime soldiers in a retaliatory attack.
Turkey has deployed masses of troops and military equipment to Syria, insisting on keeping the 12 observation posts it has established in the framework of a 2018 deal with Russia.
Jihadists from Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) and other allied rebels claimed they had downed a Syrian helicopter in Idlib on Tuesday, killing the two crew members on board. The shootdown was later confirmed by the SOHR and SANA. Footage shared on social media showed a helicopter spiraling from the sky and disintegrating.
Backed by Russian air power, Assad’s forces and other affiliated groups on December 1 began its latest offensive on Idlib, the last bastion of the rebels.
They sought to retake the province and neighboring Aleppo after its gradual loss to the rebels in the early years of the Syrian civil war that broke out in 2011.
Damascus has managed to recapture dozens of towns and villages in the area, but at the cost of mass civilian displacement.
Some 800,000 people have fled towards the Syria-Turkey border for safety since December 1, according to the United Nations – including a large number who had sought refuge in Idlib after initial displacement from elsewhere in the country.
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