Syrian fighters shoot down MiG plane

DAMASCUS: Syrian fighters said they shot down a MiG plane near Abu El-Zohur military airport in the northwestern province of Idlib yesterday.
“A MiG was shot down this morning by our men using automatic weapons ... The two pilots who parachuted from the plane were captured,” Colonel Afif Mahmoud Suleiman, provincial commander of the rebel Free Syrian Army, told AFP.
There was no immediate confirmation of the claim.
In Deir Ezzor, eastern Syria, rebels sent mortars crashing into a military security headquarters in Albi Kamal town, while fierce clashes broke out in Deir Ezzor city near another military security headquarters, the Observatory said.
The Security Council meeting called by France is aimed at “appealing to world conscience and for mobilization” in the face of the Syrian humanitarian drama, a diplomat said in New York.
Turkey has floated the idea of creating buffer zones within Syria to receive those displaced by the conflict so they do not flood across the borders into neighboring countries.
Assad, however, scoffed at the idea on Wednesday.
French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius, who will preside the UN meeting as France heads the Council in August, said Wednesday the issue of buffer zones would be brought up, even if “it is very complicated.”
Syria’s neighbors Jordan, Lebanon, Turkey and Iraq were all to send ministers to the meeting.
French President Francois Hollande has said France was working with its partners on the possible establishment of such buffer zones.
But Fabius admitted implementing these would be “very complicated” and require the imposition of partial no-fly zones.
Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu has said Turkey is in talks with the United Nations on ways to shelter thousands of refugees on Syrian soil.
“We expect the United Nations to step in for the protection of refugees inside Syria and if possible housing them in camps there,” Davutoglu was quoted as saying by Turkey’s Anatolia news agency.
The new UN-Arab League envoy on the Syria conflict, Lakhdar Brahimi, wants to visit Damascus in the next three weeks, his spokesman told reporters at the United Nations.
Human Rights Watch meanwhile said that Syrian government troops committed war crimes when they dropped bombs and fired artillery at or near at least 10 bakeries in Aleppo province over the past three weeks.
Attacks on bread lines in the northern province have killed and maimed scores of civilians, HRW said, after its researchers visited six of the targeted bakeries and interviewed witnesses.