The Russian defence ministry said the helicopter was targeted after delivering humanitarian aid to Aleppo, although pictures on social media showed it was armed with rocket pods.
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“They died heroically, because they were trying to move the aircraft away to minimize victims on the ground”, said Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov. It is unclear who is responsible.
In a statement released by the Syrian National Council, a coalition of opposition groups, the Assad regime was blamed for the alleged attack.
On Sunday, IS posted a nine-minute video message on YouTube, calling on its members to carry out jihad or holy war in Russian Federation.
A helicopter dropped containers of toxic gas overnight on a Syrian town hours after a Russian chopper was shot down nearby, local rescuers said Tuesday.
Monitors at the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which tracks violence on all sides in the civil war, said barrel bombs fell on Saraqeb late on Monday, wounding a large number of citizens.
The offensive groups fighters from Fateh al-Sham Front, formerly Al-Qaeda affiliate Al-Nusra Front, as well as the powerful Islamist Ahrar al-Sham and other factions.
And a spokesman told Reuters that 33 people, mostly women and children, were affected by the gas in Saraqeb in the northwest of the country. “If they lose, it will be hard for them to launch a new assault to break the siege”, Abdel Rahman said.
A quarter of a million civilians still live in Aleppo’s opposition-controlled eastern neighborhoods, effectively under siege since the army, aided by Iranian-backed militias, cut off the last road into rebel districts in early July. It said that “activists accused regime forces of using explosive barrels which contained gasses”.
He added that 324 civilians had so far left the militant-controlled part of Aleppo through corridors established by the Syrian government last Thursday.
The UN estimates that 200,000 to 300,000 people may still be trapped in the rebel section of Aleppo with dwindling food and medical supplies.
Once Syria’s economic powerhouse, Aleppo city has been roughly divided between government control in the west and rebel control in the east since mid-2012.
According to Tasnim dispatches, the Syrian forces, who are closing in on terrorists from the southern parts of Aleppo, received fresh logistical support on Monday night and managed to liberate two areas in the southwestern suburbs of the city.
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More than 280,000 people have been killed and millions have been forced to flee their homes since Syria’s conflict erupted in March 2011.
