Syria Insurgents Destroy Russian Helicopter With Missile

TEMPO.CO, Beirut/Yamadi-Syrian fighters destroyed a Russian helicopter with a missile, shortly after they forced it to make an emergency landing in a nearby government-held area in Syria's Latakia province on Tuesday, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

A Syrian insurgent group, recipient of U.S. Tow missiles, said its fighters hit the helicopter with an anti-tank missile while it was in the air and put out a video showing the helicopter being blown up after one of its fighters struck it with another missile.

Rami Abdulrahman from the Observatory, which tracks the conflict in Syria though a wide network of sources, said at least ten people were on the helicopter when it was hit by the insurgents but they were all evacuated when it landed and before the missile destroyed it.

The Russian defence ministry did not answer calls from Reuters seeking comment on the reports about the helicopter.

The incident happened shortly after Turkey shot down a Russian warplane near the Syrian border on Tuesday, saying it had repeatedly violated its air space, one of the most serious publicly acknowledged clashes between a NATO member country and Russia for half a century.

In Yamadi, Syria, Turkmen forces said they shot dead the two pilots of a Russian jet downed by Turkish warplanes near the border with Turkey on Tuesday as they descended with parachutes, a deputy commander of a Turkmen brigade told reporters.

"Both of the pilots were retrieved dead. Our comrades opened fire into the air and they died in the air," Alpaslan Celik, a deputy commander in a Syrian Turkmen brigade said near the Syrian village of Yamadi as he held what he said was a piece of a pilot's parachute.

REUTERS | NZM