Syrian rebels capture crew of downed military helicopter

BEIRUT // Syrian insurgents captured several government airmen after their helicopter crashed in a rebel-held area of northwestern Syria on Sunday, activists said.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the helicopter went down near Jabal Al Zawiya in Idlib province.

The aircraft experienced a technical malfunction and made an emergency crash-landing, according to the Observatory.

Syria’s state news agency confirmed that a helicopter had crashed in Idlib after a mechanical problem and said the authorities were looking for the crew.

Observatory director Rami Abdurrahman said opposition fighters, including from the Al Qaeda-affiliated Al Nusra Front, had taken four crew members prisoner. Another airman survived the crash but was reportedly killed by his captors, and the fate of a suspected sixth airman is unknown, Mr Abdurrahman said.

An amateur video posted online showed rebels inspecting the wreckage of the helicopter, which had rolled onto its side on a rocky hill. The aircraft’s blue undercarriage was partially torn and the nose badly damaged.

The Syrian military frequently uses helicopters to drop crude barrel bombs — giant canisters packed with hundreds of pounds of explosives and scrap metal — on rebel-held towns and neighbourhoods.

Meanwhile, a group of British medical students of Sudanese origin who went missing after travelling to Turkey are feared to have crossed into Syria to join ISIL as doctors, according to reports on Sunday.

The families of the students have travelled to the Turkey-Syria border in a desperate appeal for them to return home before it is too late, a Turkish opposition MP said.

According to reports in Britain’s The Guardian newspaper and the BBC, the nine young British medical students flew to Istanbul from the Sudanese capital Khartoum on March 12 and then overland towards Syria.

They have been joined by two other medics from the United States and Canada, also of Sudanese origin, the BBC said.

A Turkish MP from the Republican People’s Party Mehmet Ali Ediboglu, who represents the Hatay region bordering Syria, wrote on his Facebook page that he was helping the families in their search.

“The families of the young people have been in Turkey to search for them and bring them back,” he said.

Turkey has repeatedly been accused by its Western partners of not doing enough to halt the flow of extremists aiming to join ISIL.

It was sharply criticised over the failure to stop three British teenage girls who crossed the Turkey-Syria border to join ISIL in February.

However in the last week it has deported back to Britain a young British woman and three male British teenagers who were suspected of trying to travel to Syria.

* Associated Press, Agence France-Presse