A government helicopter was shot down and its crew killed Friday in Syria's northwest, where a military offensive against opposition fighters is unfolding, a Syrian military official and activists said.
Videos posted online show a helicopter spiraling downward from the sky, with flames trailing behind as onlookers cheer.
A military official told Syrian state media that the helicopter was hit by a “hostile rocket” in the western countryside of Aleppo province. The unnamed official said the helicopter crashed and its crew was killed.
It was the second time this week that a government helicopter was downed in northwest Syria. Another government helicopter gunship was downed three days earlier, near the village of Nairab.
A Syrian military offensive in the region is seeking to uproot opposition fighters from the last territory they hold.
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which has a network of activists on the ground, said the helicopter was downed Friday in the village of Qibtan al-Jebel, north of Aleppo city. It said two crew members were killed and their bodies were found near the site of the crash.
It was not clear who downed the helicopter or how. Insurgents were believed to be behind the Tuesday downing of a helicopter in which the 2-member crew was killed.
The Observatory said the helicopter was downed Friday by Turkish military forces stationed in the opposition-held region. There was no immediate comment from Turkey.
Turkey's state-run Anadolu Agency said only that a helicopter belonging to Syrian President Bashar Assad’s forces was brought down in the western Aleppo countryside.
The agency said the helicopter took off from an area near the Aleppo city center amid “clashes between the opposition and regime forces” and was shot at from the Qibtan al-Jabal region. It was seen crashing, unleashing a plume of smoke, the agency reported.
Insurgents have sought to acquire portable defense systems to target government warplanes, often acquiring them from seized stockpiles or from outside supporters.
Turkey, backer of Syria's opposition, has been deploying equipment and troops in the region, which is home to more than 3 million people, in an attempt to halt the Syrian military's advances. But the increased Turkish footprint has also resulted in confrontations with the Syrian troops and clashes between the two sides have killed 13 Turkish military personnel and 13 Syrian troops.
The violence has displaced 800,000 people since Dec. 1 in one of the largest single waves of displacement ever in such a short period. Many of the displaced are living in the open, in tent settlements in sub zero temperatures.
Associated Press writer Suzan Fraser in Ankara, Turkey contributed to this report.
WASHINGTON (AP) — U.S. officials have developed specific and highly credible intelligence suggesting that an American citizen who disappeared seven years ago while traveling in Syria has died, the man's daughter said Saturday.
Maryam Kamalmaz said in an interview with The Associated Press that during a meeting in Washington this month with eight senior American officials she was presented with detailed intelligence about the presumed death of her father, Majd, a psychotherapist from Texas.
The officials told her that on a scale of one to 10, their confidence level about her father's death was a “high nine." She said she asked whether other detained Americans had ever been successfully recovered in the face of such credible information, and was told no.
“What more do I need? That was a lot of high-level officials that we needed to confirm to us that he’s really gone. There was no way to beat around the bush,” Maryam Kamalmaz said.
She said officials told her they believe the death occurred years ago, early in her father's captivity. In 2020, she said, officials told the family that they had reason to believe that he had died of heart failure in 2017, but the family held out hope and U.S. officials continued their pursuit.
But, she said, “Not until this meeting did they really confirm to us how credible the information is and the different levels of (verification) it had to go through."
She did not describe the intelligence she learned.
A spokesperson for the White House declined to comment Saturday. The FBI's Hostage Recovery Fusion Cell issued a statement that did not offer any update on Kamalmaz but said that no matter how much time has passed, it continues to work “on behalf of the victims and their families to recover all U.S hostages and support the families whose loved ones are held captive or missing.”
Majd Kamalmaz disappeared in February 2017 at the age of 59 while traveling in Syria to visit an elderly family member. The FBI has said he was stopped at a Syrian government checkpoint in a suburb of Damascus and had not been heard from since.
Kamalmaz is one of multiple Americans who have disappeared in Syria, including the journalist Austin Tice, who went missing in 2012 at a checkpoint in a contested area west of Damascus. Syria has publicly denied holding Americans in captivity.
In 2020, in the final months of the Trump administration, senior officials visited Damascus for a high-level meeting aimed at negotiating release of the Americans. But the meeting proved unfruitful, with the Syrians not providing any proof-of-life information and making demands that U.S. officials deemed unreasonable. U.S. officials have said they are continuing to try to bring home Tice.
The New York Times first reported on the presumed death of Majd Kamalmaz.
FILE - Rep. Al Green, right, listens as Samar Hamwi, sister of Majd Kamalmaz, speaks during the Bring Our Families Home Campaign, a campaign led by family members of Americans wrongfully detained or held hostage abroad, news conference on Tuesday, July 4, 2023 in Houston. U.S. officials have developed specific and highly credible intelligence suggesting that Majd Kamalmaz, an American citizen who disappeared seven years ago while traveling in Syria has died, his daughter, Maryam Kamalmaz, said Saturday, May 18. (Yi-Chin Lee/Houston Chronicle via AP, file)
FILE - Maryam Kamalmaz poses for a photo in her home in Grand Prairie, Texas, Wednesday, Jan. 17, 2024. U.S. officials have developed specific and highly credible intelligence suggesting that Majd Kamalmaz, an American citizen who disappeared seven years ago while traveling in Syria has died, Maryam Kamalmazr said Saturday, May 18. (AP Photo/Julio Cortez, file)
FILE - Maryam Kamalmaz hold a photo of her father with some of his 14 grandchildren in Grand Prairie, Texas, Jan. 17, 2024. U.S. officials have developed specific and highly credible intelligence suggesting that Majd Kamalmaz, an American citizen who disappeared seven years ago while traveling in Syria has died, Maryam Kamalmaz said Saturday, May 18. (AP Photo/Julio Cortez, File)
