BEIRUT: Syrian rebels shot down a military helicopter in the country’s east, killing eight government troops on board as President Bashar Assad’s troops battled opposition forces inside a sprawling military air base in the north for the second straight day, activists said Monday.
In the past months, rebels fighting to topple Assad have frequently targeted military aircraft and air bases in an attempt to deprive his regime of a key weapon used to target opposition strongholds and reverse rebel gains in the 2-year-old conflict.
The fighting inside the Mannagh air base in northern Syria came a day after Israeli warplanes struck areas in and around the capital, Damascus, setting off a series of explosions as they targeted a shipment of highly accurate, Iranian-made guided missiles believed to be bound for Lebanon’s Hezbollah militant group, officials and activists said.
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights on Monday posted a video online showing several armed men standing in front of the wreckage. One of the fighters in the footage says it’s a helicopter that the rebels shot down late Sunday in the eastern province of Deir el-Zour, along Syria’s border with Iraq.
As the man speaks, the camera shifts to a pickup truck piled with bodies. The fighter is then heard saying that all of Assad’s troops who were aboard the helicopter were killed in the downing. He says Islamic fighters of the Abu Bakr Saddiq brigade brought down the helicopter as it was taking off from a nearby air base in the provincial capital of Deir el-Zour.
The Observatory, which relies on a network of activists on the ground, said eight troops were killed.
On Sunday, rebels occupied parts of the Mannagh military air base after weeks of fighting with government troops who have been defending the sprawling facility near the border with Turkey for months, the Observatory said.
Assad’s warplanes were pounding rebel positions inside the Mannagh air base Monday as clashes between rebels and government forces raged on, the Observatory said, adding there was an unknown number of casualties on both sides.
The rebels moved deep into the air base on Sunday despite fire from government warplanes, capturing a tank unit inside the base and killing the base commander, Brig. Gen. Ali Salim Mahmoud, according to another activists group, the Aleppo Media Center.
15 killed in Israel raids
Israeli strikes on Syrian military targets at the weekend killed at least 15 soldiers and dozens more were unaccounted for, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights watchdog said on Monday.
“At least 15 soldiers were killed, and dozens more are missing” after the strikes near Damascus early on Sunday, said the Observatory’s Rami Abdel Rahman.
“These three sites (targeted) would usually have around 150 soldiers in them, but it’s not clear if they were all there at the time of the strikes.”
Syria said on Sunday that Israel had targeted three military sites near Damascus, with a diplomatic source in Beirut saying the attacks were against a military facility, a weapons depot and an anti-aircraft unit.
The Syrian government has not given an official toll from the attacks, but the foreign ministry said in a letter to the UN that the Israeli “aggression caused deaths and injuries and serious destruction.”
The attacks, which residents said sounded like an earthquake and lit up the night sky, were the second time in a week that Israel has reportedly targeted Syrian sites.
An senior Israeli source said the target was weapons destined for Lebanese group Hezbollah, which is allied with the regime of Assad.
The Israeli airstrike on Sunday, the second in three days and the third this year, signaled a sharp escalation of Israel’s involvement in Syria’s civil war.
The Syrian conflict started with largely peaceful protests against Assad’s regime in March 2011, but eventually turned into a civil war that has killed more than 70,000 people according to the United Nations.
More than one million Syrians have fled their homes during the fighting and sought shelter in neighboring countries such as Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey. Millions of others have been displaced inside Syria.
Syrian rebels shoot down regime helicopter in east
