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Russian military helicopter shot down in Syria, killing all 5 aboard

Three crew and two officers were on board.

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Speaking to Al Jazeera, he claimed that rebel fighters, including those from the Ahrar al-Sham armed group, took control of several buildings throughout Ramosa.

Two activist groups – the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Observatory and the Local Coordination Committees – say rebels shot down the helicopter over Idlib.

Citing the need to fight terrorists in faraway territories before they arrived in Russia, Putin began a military operation in Syria at the end of September in support of the government of President Bashar Assad.

The eastern Aleppo area has been helped by rebels since 2012 but is now encircled by regime forces.

The Syrian National Coalition issued a statement that read: “After shelling, besieging and killing civilians and perpetrating war crimes on them, the Assad regime has resorted once again, and in breach of United Nations resolutions 2118 and 2235, to using chemical substances and toxic gasses”.

Violence has increased around Aleppo, including in neighboring provinces, since the government sealed off the final lifeline to rebel-controlled neighborhoods of the city.

Meanwhile clashes are continuing near Aleppo, where rebels have launched an offensive to break a government siege.

Opposition fighters have been besieged since 17 July, when government forces surrounded rebel-held districts of Aleppo as well as cutting the Castello Road, the key rebel supply route into the city’s northern districts.

State news agency SANA said rebel rocket and sniper fire near Ramussa on Monday killed four people, including three women.

The strikes came despite an appeal by US Secretary of State John Kerry on Monday for Russian Federation to “restrain” itself and its ally in Damascus from “offensive operations”.

A spokesman for rebel fighters reportedly said 33 people, majority women and children, were hurt.

The Syrian government, backed by Russian Federation, launched a large-scale humanitarian relief operation in Aleppo on Friday and created corridors providing civilians and the militants, who chose to surrender, the opportunity to leave the city.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said that barrel bombs fell on Saraqeb late on Monday and injured a large number of citizens, according to Reuters.

The helicopter came down in Idlib province, roughly mid-way between Aleppo and the Russian air force base at Khmeimim, near the Mediterranean coast.

On Saturday, Moscow and Syrian official media reported dozens of civilians had fled via these corridors, but residents and rebels on the ground dismissed the reports as “lies”.

The accusations on both sides came amid heightened fighting around the contested northern city that killed at least 20 people, activists and government media reported.

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The Russian helicopter downed Monday crashed about 15 kilometers from the site of the chemical attacks.

Sergei Rudskoy head of Russian General Staff's main operations command speaks during a news briefing on Syria in Moscow Russia