{{Syrian rebels downed an army helicopter for the first time on Tuesday with a newly-acquired ground-to-air missile, in what a watchdog said could be a turning point in the 20-month-old conflict.}}
“It is the first time that the rebels have shot down a helicopter with a surface-to-air missile,” Rami Abdel Rahman, director of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, said of the gunship, which was on a strafing run near a besieged northwestern base.
The Sheikh Suleiman base, 25 kilometres (15 miles) west of Aleppo, is the last garrison in government hands between Syria’s second city and the Turkish border.
Amateur footage posted by activists on YouTube showed a helicopter plunging to the ground in a ball of flames as rebel fighters shouted: “We hit it, God is greatest.”
The Observatory said the missile was part of a consignment newly received by the rebels that had the potential to change the balance of military power in the conflict.
Little more than a week ago, the rebels seized tanks, armoured vehicles, artillery, 120-mm mortars and rocket launchers when they took the government forces’ sprawling Base 46, about 12 kilometres (eight miles) west of Aleppo.
The rebels, a mix of military defectors and armed civilians, are vastly outgunned but analysts say they are now stretching thin the capabilities of Assad’s war machine and its air supremacy by opening multiple fronts.
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