Five crew members were killed as a Russian military chopper was shot down in Syria by rebels, the Kremlin said.
The helicopter shot down on Sunday in the rebel-held Idlib province had three crew members and two officers on board.
The Russian helicopter was downed in Tal al-Sultan village in Idlib, according to activists.
Photos showing the burning wreck of the downed helicopter were circulated on social media, while there is conflicting news about the fate of the helicopter’s crew.
“There are [on the images] lots of people standing around this wreckage and the body of a man being dragged away with various bits of documentation and ID being displayed,” a journalist said.
“The signs were there that this would be something very sorry the Russian government would want to admit to.”
Some activists said that the pilot and the crew were captured, others said they were killed immediately as a result of targeting their aircraft.
Delivering humanitarian aid
Russia’s defense ministry was cited as saying that the helicopter, a Mi-8 military transport helicopter, had been shot down after “delivering humanitarian aid” to the city of Aleppo as it made its way back to Russia’s main air base in Syria.
“There were three crew members and two officers from the Russian reconciliation center in Syria on board,” the ministry said in a statement.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov expressed condolences over the deaths of the five soldiers.
“As far as we know from the information we’ve had from the defense ministry, those in the helicopter died,” he said.
The incident was the deadliest single attack on Russian forces in Syria since Moscow began its intervention in support of President Bashar al-Assad’s government last September.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based monitor, said the helicopter had come down along the administrative border between Idlib province in the northwest and neighboring Aleppo.
Breaking. Rebels claim they downed one helicopter in S. #Aleppo. pic.twitter.com/0xT1XYpZHL
— Qalaat Al Mudiq (@QalaatAlMudiq) August 1, 2016
Wreckage of helicopter shot down by Rebels in S. #Aleppo. Pilot dead. pic.twitter.com/d5iByb3jsX
— Qalaat Al Mudiq (@QalaatAlMudiq) August 1, 2016
#Russian Mi-8 was shot down on S. #Aleppo/#Idlib border allegedly by #JaishAlFath pic.twitter.com/CoAxW633XC
— Warfare Worldwide (@WarfareWW) August 1, 2016
#عاجل
إسقاط طائرة هليكوبتر روسية في إدلب والمروحية التي سقطت كانت تقل طاقما من 5 أفراد ومصيرهم مجهول. pic.twitter.com/HR02RmQMp9— أخبار جيش الفتح (@Lionshunters) August 1, 2016
