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A Syrian military helicopter went down in a ball of fire Monday after it was apparently hit during fighting between government forces and rebels in the capital Damascus, activists said.
A video posted on the Internet showed the chopper engulfed in flames and spinning out of control shortly before it hit the ground amid bursts of gunfire near a mosque. Rebels shout “Allahu Akbar!” or God is great, as the helicopter goes down. The authenticity of the video could not be independently verified.
Syrian opposition activists accused President Bashar al-Assad’s forces on Sunday of committing a massacre of scores of people in a town close to the capital that the army had just retaken from rebels.
More than 200 bodies were found in houses and basements around Daraya, a working-class Sunni Muslim town to the southwest of Damascus, according to activists who said most had been killed “execution-style” by troops on house-to-house raids.
Heavy shelling and clashes have continued to rage across swathes of Aleppo, Syria’s largest city, as both the regime and rebels claim they are gaining ground in the key northern battleground.
At least 24 people were reported to have been killed nationwide on Tuesday, among them women and children in Aleppo, as the Syrian government pressed rebel-held areas.
The rebel Free Syrian Army (FSA) claimed that it controlled almost two-thirds of the city, which has been battered by a month of air strikes, shelling and fighting.
Seven people have been killed in Lebanon’s northern city of Tripoli as clashes between Sunni Muslims and Alawites, fuelled by tensions over the war in Syria, continued for a second night, security and medical sources said on Tuesday.
Around 100 people have also been wounded since the fighting erupted on Monday evening, they said.
Syrian forces pounded opposition hubs in the cities of Aleppo and Homs on Friday, according to news agency and Al Arabiya reports, adding that regime forces battled fighters around Damascus.
On the ground, violence was also reported in other towns and villages across the country, with the bloodletting showing no signs of any let-up a day after the United Nations formally called time on its observer mission.
At least 157 people were killed across Syria by security force gunfire so far on Friday, according to the Local Coordination Committees activist group.