PHOTO: Mi-25 helicopter is the first Russian plane downed by enemy fire over Syrian territory
LATEST
- ISIS Suicide Bomb Kills At Least 14 Jaish al-Islam Rebels
- Rebels Fail to Break Regime’s “Fire Control” of Last Route Into Aleppo City
- Family: US Journalist Colvin Targeted & Killed by Syrian Military
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The Islamic State has shot down a Russian military helicopter in central Syria, killing the two pilots.
The Mi-25 helicopter is the second Russian warplane downedsince Moscow’s aerial intervention last September. In November, Turkish fighter planes shot down a Russian MiG-24 as it briefly crossed Turkey’s territory en route to a bombing raid on Latakia in northwest Syria.
The Russian Defense Ministry said the helicopter was attacking ISIS positions near Palmyra in central Syria.
The Ministry said the pilots “had used up all their ammunition and were on their way back when they came under the fire of terrorists and crashed in an area held by Syrian government troops”.
The statement said the helicopter was an Mi-25, but other reports said it was a more advanced Mi-35.
The Interfax State news agency, citing a source in the Russian military, said ISIS used a US anti-tank guided missile system. The Islamic State did not give details of the weapon used, and there was no other support for the claim.
The Syrian military and militia, enabled by Russian airstrikes, retook the historic city of Palmyra in late March. The Islamic State has continued to challenge pro-Assad forces near the city in eastern Homs Province, including fighting for control of oil and gas fields.
Russia has officially acknowledged the loss of 10 military personnel since its intervention from last autumn, with thousands of airstrikes and “advisors” on the ground.
ISIS Suicide Bomb Kills At Least 14 Jaish al-Islam Rebels
At least 14 Jaish al-Islam rebels have been killed by an Islamic State suicide bomb.
The ISIS bomber attacked early Sunday in Dumayr, northeast of Damascus.
A Jaish al-Islam source confirmed the death toll and said several other fighters were wounded. The Local Coordination Committees said 25 rebels were dead.
Rebels Fail to Break Regime’s “Fire Control” of Last Route Into Aleppo City
Rebels have failed in their initial attempt to break the “fire control” of pro-Assad forces over the last route into opposition-held Aleppo city.
The rebel bloc Jaish al-Fatah tried on Saturday to regain a hill in the southern part of al-Mallah Farms, occupied by the Syrian military and foreign militias on Thursday after months of attempts to control the al-Castello Road.
See Syria Daily, July 8: Will Assad’s Forces Cut Off Opposition in Aleppo?
Pro-opposition accounts said the rebels initially took the hill, but were forced to withdraw as they came under heavy artillery fire.
Footage from the rebel faction Noureddin al-Zinki of the attack:
With the capture of al-Mallah, the pro-Assad forces are within 1.5 km (1 mile) of the al-Castello Road and can target it with artillery. Rebels declared the road a “military route” on Saturday, closing it to all civilian traffic.
Family: US Journalist Colvin Targeted & Killed by Syrian Military
The family of US journalist Marie Colvin has filed a civil lawsuit claiming that she was deliberately targeted and killed on the orders of senior Syrian military officers, trying to silence her reporting on civilian casualties.
In Februrary 2012, Colvin and French cameraman Remy Ochlik were among the casualties of an artillery attack on a makeshift media center in Baba Amir the city of Homs.
The Syrian military leveled Baba Amr and other districts as it tried to regain control of Homs, Syria’s third-largest city.
The lawsuit alleges that the artillery attack was the outcome of “a conspiracy formed by senior members of the regime of President Bashar al-Assad…to silence local and international media as part of its campaign to crush political opposition”.
Based on information from high-level defectors and captured regime documents, the 32-page legal complaint alleges that the Syrian military was able to electronically intercept Colvin’s communications, as the journalist filed reports for the Sunday Times of London.
Syrian officials allegedly paired the intercepts with detailed information from a female informant to pinpoint the location of the reporter who worked for the Sunday Times of London. Then military forces of the Syrian Army’s 4th Armored Division, under the commander of President Assad’s brother Maher, launched a series of “bracketing” artillery attacks closing on the media center.
Two other foreign journalists, including Sunday Times photographer Paul Conroy, were injured in the attack but later escaped.
The lawsuit said the plan was created by the high-level Central Crisis Management Cell, charged by President Assad to track and kill opponents. It names nine military officers and Khaled al-Fares, the leader of the squad carrying out attacks, as responsible for the extrajudicial killing of civilians.
Maher Assad gave Fares a black luxury vehicle as a reward for the killing of Colvin and Ochlik, the complaint asserts.
