Syria Conflict: Helicopter Crashes Near Damascus

A helicopter has crashed near the Syrian capital, Damascus, Syrian state television has said.

The helicopter was said to have crashed close to Douma, a suburb east of Damascus.

At the end of August, rebels said they shot down a helicopter on the outskirts of Damascus.

The government has increasingly been using helicopters and other aircraft in its fight against the rebellion which started last year.

Rebel fighters have said they shot down the helicopter, says the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a UK-based opposition activist group.

In the Dutch political capital, The Hague, a group of financial experts, foreign diplomats and Syrian defectors is meeting to look for new economic ways of weakening Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s grip on power.

The group, called the Friends of Syria, is discussing how to make sanctions on the Syrian government more effective and how to track down the Assad government’s hidden financial assets.

Dutch Foreign Minister Uri Rosenthal at the meeting said that one of the problems was that not all countries implemented sanctions on Syria.

Abdo Husameddin, a former Syrian oil minister who defected from the regime in March, has told the BBC President Assad’s extended family may have billions of dollars hidden abroad.

“They are talking about probably more than $10bn (£6.2bn). And there are some other faces in fact hidden beside the regime itself. So all of this money is not directly under the name of Assad himself, but by other names.”

Alliance

On Wednesday, the foreign minister of Iran, Syria’s close regional ally, held talks with President Assad, who told him that the attack his country is facing, is not just against Syria, but also against its alliance with Iran and Hezbollah.

There was further heavy fighting in Damascus and in the northern city of Aleppo.

Amnesty International warned that indiscriminate air and artillery strikes were causing a dramatic rise in civilian casualties in Idlib and Hama.

The UN estimates that the conflict has left at least 20,000 people dead.

Bomb attacks in Damascus and the largest city, Aleppo, have become increasingly frequent in recent months, with the authorities often blaming them on “armed terrorist gangs”.

BBC