Islamic rebels captured four crew members of a regime helicopter, which crashed in Idlib Province of northwest Syria on Sunday, while a fifth serviceman was killed, a monitor said.
“A regime helicopter was forced to land in the region of Jabal al-Zawiya in the northwest, which is a bastion of [al-Qaeda’s Syrian affiliate] al-Nusra Front,” Syrian Observatory for Human Rights director Rami Abdel Rahman said. “Four of the crew were captured and a fifth man was killed by armed men in a neighboring village.”
Abdel Rahman said the al-Nusra Front held two of the servicemen, including the helicopter’s pilot. Official al-Nusra Front accounts on Twitter published photos and videos with the caption “Helicopter pilot in the hands of jihadists.” The images depict the bandaged pilot sitting in front of al-Nusra Front’s official flag.
“To the Muslim children, to their mothers, who died two days ago because of their chlorine attack,” a bearded fighter said in the video, pointing to the pilot.
On Tuesday last week, a family of six died in Idlib Province after a regime gas attack on the village of Sarmin. Opposition forces accused the regime of using chlorine, a toxic agent that can be considered a chemical weapon.
Two other servicemen from the helicopter crash were captured by another Islamic group, and at least one more crew member was believed to be on the run, Abdel Rahman said.
Regime helicopters are often used to drop crudely constructed barrel bombs on rebel-held areas.
Pictures provided by the Observatory showed groups of men gathering around a damaged helicopter lying on its side on a rocky hilltop.
Syrian state television confirmed a military helicopter had crashed in Idlib, saying it was due to a technical failure and that search efforts were underway to locate the crew.
In the southern province of Daraa, opposition fighters and forces loyal to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad clashed in the ancient town of Busra al-Sham, the Observatory said.
At least nine opposition fighters were killed, but the casualty toll on the regime side was not immediately known.
The town has both Sunni and Shiite Muslim residents, with control divided between regime and rebel forces.
Opposition groups shelled the Shiite neighborhoods heavily on Sunday, a day after regime forces had shelled rebel-held areas, Abdel Rahman said.
A regime helicopter also dropped at least one barrel bomb on the town on Sunday, but Abdel Rahman had no immediate report on civilian casualties.
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is to visit Russia next month for a summit of the BRICS bloc of developing economies, Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) said on Thursday, a move that comes as Moscow and Beijing seek to counter the West’s global influence. Xi’s visit to Russia would be his second since the Kremlin sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022. China claims to take a neutral position in the conflict, but it has backed the Kremlin’s contentions that Russia’s action was provoked by the West, and it continues to supply key components needed by Moscow for
Japan scrambled fighter jets after Russian aircraft flew around the archipelago for the first time in five years, Tokyo said yesterday. From Thursday morning to afternoon, the Russian Tu-142 aircraft flew from the sea between Japan and South Korea toward the southern Okinawa region, the Japanese Ministry of Defense said in a statement. They then traveled north over the Pacific Ocean and finished their journey off the northern island of Hokkaido, it added. The planes did not enter Japanese airspace, but flew over an area subject to a territorial dispute between Japan and Russia, a ministry official said. “In response, we mobilized Air Self-Defense
CRITICISM: ‘One has to choose the lesser of two evils,’ Pope Francis said, as he criticized Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and Harris’ pro-choice position Pope Francis on Friday accused both former US president Donald Trump and US Vice President Kamala Harris of being “against life” as he returned to Rome from a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific region. The 87-year-old pontiff’s comments on the US presidential hopefuls came as he defied health concerns to connect with believers from the jungle of Papua New Guinea to the skyscrapers of Singapore. It was Francis’ longest trip in duration and distance since becoming head of the world’s nearly 1.4 billion Roman Catholics more than 11 years ago. Despite the marathon visit, he held a long and spirited
China would train thousands of foreign law enforcement officers to see the world order “develop in a more fair, reasonable and efficient direction,” its minister for public security has said. “We will [also] send police consultants to countries in need to conduct training to help them quickly and effectively improve their law enforcement capabilities,” Chinese Minister of Public Security Wang Xiaohong (王小洪) told an annual global security forum. Wang made the announcement in the eastern city of Lianyungang on Monday in front of law enforcement representatives from 122 countries, regions and international organizations such as Interpol. The forum is part of ongoing
RSS