Posted on 10/18/2012 4:32:30 AM PDT by lbryce
A video reportedly shot by an amateur in the Syrian city of Idlib Wednesday shows a crippled Syrian military helicopter spiraling down before it explodes in flames. Syrian rebels say they shot down the helicopter, according to The Telegraph.
The rebels reportedly have acquired heavy weapons in recent weeks, The Telegraph reported, pushing the Syrian air force to attack rebel-held zones from higher altitudes.
Syria's divided rebels have agreed to set up a joint leadership to oversee their battle to overthrow President Bashar Assad, two insurgent sources said Tuesday as fighting raged in cities across the country.
Rebels hope the decision, taken after increasing pressure from foreign supporters on them to unite, will help convince those backers that they are a credible and coordinated fighting force deserving to be supplied with more powerful weapons.
'Extremely dangerous': Assad forces use cluster bombs as rebels gain, rights group says
"The agreement has been reached, they only need to sign it now," one rebel source said. Foreign supporters "are telling us: 'Sort yourselves out and unite, we need a clear and credible side to provide it with quality weapons.'"
He said Qatar and Turkey were the main drivers behind the agreement, which he added might be formally announced this month.
Since the beginning of the revolt against Assad, Western powers have been reluctant to arm the divided rebel factions.
This is the latest attempt to bring together Assad's disparate armed opponents, most of whom have fought nominally under the banner of the rebel Free Syrian Army but who in practice have operated independently, often weakened by deep rivalries.
More weapons in Syria could trigger 'all-out war'
The new leadership will include FSA leaders Riad al-Asaad and Mustafa Sheikh - criticized by many rebels because they are based in Turkey - and recently defected Gen. Mohammad Haj Ali, as well as heads of rebel provincial military councils inside Syria like Qassem Saadeddine, based in Homs province.
The Syrian National Council has set Nov. 4 as the date for an opposition unity conference in Qatar, organizers said.
The 19-month-old revolt against Assad, which started as peaceful demonstrations, has mushroomed into a civil war, pitting the mainly Sunni Muslim rebels against a power structure dominated by the Alawite minority.
Activists say more than 30,000 people have been killed, hundreds of thousands have fled to neighboring countries and more than a million have been displaced inside Syria as entire city districts have been rendered ghost towns by heavy shelling.
The British Observatory for Human Rights said 80 people had been killed in Syria by dusk on Tuesday, after 160 died on Monday. Heavy clashes broke out in the city of Hama, and fighting continued in Aleppo and the northern province of Idlib.
A Reuters correspondent on Lebanon's northeastern border with Syria saw a helicopter dropping explosives on the Syrian side of the frontier. Refugees unloading blankets from a pickup truck in an olive grove on the Lebanese side stopped to watch big black plumes of smoke rising into the sky.
Underlining increasing international concern about the conflict, Pope Benedict will send a group of top cardinals to visit Syria in coming days to express solidarity with its battered population, the Vatican news service said.
Envoy seeks ceasefire U.N.-Arab League mediator Lakhdar Brahimi has called on Shiite Muslim Iran, Assad's closest regional ally, to help arrange a ceasefire in Syria during the Islamic holiday of Eid al-Adha later this month.
Diplomatic sources said Brahimi is also trying to persuade Assad and the rebels to accept a ceasefire and allow U.N. monitors into the country to oversee it.
Brahimi, who took over after Kofi Annan quit in frustration in August, has been traveling around the Middle East trying to nudge regional powers into accepting his plan, which resembles a ceasefire Annan tried in vain to implement, U.N. diplomats said.
But diplomatic sources familiar with Brahimi's proposals said that neither Assad's government nor the fractious opposition had shown interest in halting the conflict.
Major powers at the United Nations remain deadlocked over what to do to defuse Syria's conflict.
Outgunned rebels have struggled to turn the tide of conflict against government forces endowed with tanks, jets and helicopter gunships. But Western powers have been reluctant to arm the insurgents because they perceive no coherent leadership and fear that weapons are ending up in the hands of Islamist militants increasingly evident in the conflict.
Mistrust and miscommunication have dominated relations between rebel brigades and each privately accuse the other of incompetence. Differences over leadership, tactics and sources of funding have also widened rifts between largely autonomous brigades scattered across Syria.
The rebel sources said countries who have supported the revolt but whose own rivalries have exacerbated rebel divisions agreed that it was time the rebels fight side by side.
"There will never be unity inside Syria unless the countries supporting the revolt agree because each group is supported and backed by (one) country," one source said.
"Now the countries are becoming nervous and the Syrian issue has become bigger than they expected and almost out of control."
Rebel leaders believe a common fighting front would enable coordination of multifaceted operations crucial to success against a better armed adversary.
"If a brigade wants to hit a (government) checkpoint, then an intelligence unit would check it out and then raise a report up to the (regional) command. The command will take a decision on the number of men needed for this operation and the kind of weapons plus other issues," another rebel source said.
Way too big, too energetic. Jet fuel/air is much less explosive than gasoline/air and if it had been the fuel it would have been a much smaller detonation. This looked like the air burst of an aircraft bomb.
yup!!
Could have been a combination of atomized fuel spraying from a ruptured fuel line and on board ordnance exploding. Unusual though. Most helicopter shoot downs involve damage to flight control components and the aircraft just drops and spins to the ground.
That’s one way to enforce a “no-fly” zone..
I used to know someone who grew up in Libya because her father was stationed there with the State Dept. She left as a young teenager as part of an evacuation in the late 70s. At that time the people there loved Americans for the most part, except for the few radicals.
The radicals have had a generation to cement their position and are willing to kill anyone who disagrees. The fact that we are now helping the radicals is surreal.
“Could the fuel lead to an explosion like this?”
That is a fuel/air explosion you see, but it was atomized by a high explosive, a lot of it — probably ordinance they were carrying was armed and rattling around as they tumbled.
BANG.
Heaven help us.
Their radicals sound just like our democrats. Birds of a feather...
ordnance
Hooray for Al Queda? We need more “democracy” islam nations in the Middle East!!! They are slaughtering the Christians and Americans and that has to be a good thing! :(
That ain't it, but you should have seen the bomb dump at Chu Lai. Takes a lot to keep three squadrons of F-4s fed.
Thanks lbryce.
Just my amateur observation but usually HE gives a smokey grey explosion while fuel will give you the “Hollywood” orange fire ball.
HE usually has a large fireball but on the ground dust often obscures it from view. If you have seen some of the video of the IDEs used in Iraq and Afghanistan, you’ll usually see large fireballs from the large quantities of explosives used. That explosion says “HE” to me and I have been on both ends of that stuff much of my life.
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