The government acknowledged the incident but said the aircraft had crashed.
Witnesses said the copter did appear to have been struck by a projectile and engulfed in flames before coming down in a residential street in the Qaboun neighbourhood. There are reports that army helicopters had been firing rockets and machineguns at rebels in the adjacent suburb of Jobar just before the crash. Elsewhere the Free Syrian Army in Marea, north of Aleppo, is pleading for the international community to come to their aid: "In the massacres in Houla and Azaz, the children were slaughtered in our country and the women were buried under the rubble", said one fighter. "Where is the world? What are they doing? Where are the Muslims? How can they not be affected? It's as if the Muslims and the rest of the world are blind."
A video posted on a website claims to show bodies on the ground in and around a mosque in Daraya on the edge of the Damascus. Activists say 270 people were killed there by the Syrian army on Sunday. Some say the figure was over 300. Again the account is unconfirmed by independent media. The government claims they were killed by the opposition and that Daraya has now been cleansed of what it called "terrorist remnants". The violence against civilians in Daraya has been condemned by the European Union.
SOURCE: Euronews
