Private, Baladi News
A Russian Mi-8 military helicopter was shot down on Monday southwest of Aleppo, which is considered the second helicopter of this kind Russia loses in Syria since its involvement. An aircraft of the same type has been destroyed earlier by a TAO missile launched by the rebels while landing to search for the Russian pilots whom Turkey dropped their launcher. Moreover, at least two helicopters which were dropped by ground fires along with 4 helicopters that were destroyed in al-Tayfor military airbase.
Five Russian officers had been killed while the shooting down, three of which are the crew members and two officers. The helicopter was burned completely following the fall which means that it was subjected to ground fires and didn't fall because of a technical glitch as promoted in the beginning.
"Humanitarian Aid"
Russia claims that the dropped helicopter was carrying humanitarian aid, the thing that the images and videos that have been published deny. It appears arming with two S-8 missile launchers including 40 missiles, which decreases its capacity to carry any humanitarian aid. This indicates that it wasn't in a "humanitarian" transport mission, but rather in a bombardment mission, or a transporting mission for the officers who had been killed while shooting.
All the pictures that have been shown for the wreckage of the helicopter don't show any traces of any freight containing parcels or boxes or anything similar, but only two missile launchers which appeared clearly in the videos and images. The same thing was confirmed by eyewitnesses from the wreckage site, who have stressed its emptiness of any freight, which denies the Russian story about the helicopter's mission.
The most important thing about the helicopter's crash is that it had been dropped by ground fires as the Russians admitted. The way and weapon used to drop the helicopter have not been identified yet, but the repeated cases of shooting down Russian helicopters give assurances about the failure of the jamming methods on the anti-aircrafts missiles which Russia promoted for through spreading them on its aircrafts in Syria.
The helicopter's crash confirms the state of turmoil experienced by the Russian forces in Syria due to the battels in Aleppo, which was reaffirmed by the official page of the Russian forces in Syria, which said: "The helicopter was shot down due to an error in coordination with the ground forces after having informed the pilot that the area he is flying over belongs to the regime, but actually it was for the rebels".
