BEIRUT, Lebanon — Syrian rebels downed a military helicopter with a surface-to-air missile outside Aleppo on Tuesday, video uploaded by antigovernment activists appeared to show, marking what is potentially a major battlefield advance: confirmation that rebels have put their growing stock of heat-seeking missiles to effective use.
In one video, a utility helicopter that appeared to be a Russian-built Mi-8 can be seen banking in a slow left turn and then being hit squarely near its engine by a fast-moving projectile rising at a sharp angle from below. Another video showed what appeared to be the same helicopter moments after the strike. The crippled aircraft manages a partly controlled descent in spreading flames, as a voice off-camera shouts, “sarook,” or rocket, before it strikes the ground and explodes.
In recent months, rebels have used mainly machine guns to shoot down several Syrian Air Force helicopters and fixed-wing attack jets. In this case the thick smoke trailing the projectile, combined with the elevation of the aircraft, strongly suggested that the helicopter was hit by a missile.
Rebels hailed the event as the culmination of their long pursuit of effective antiaircraft weapons, though it was not clear if the downing was an isolated tactical success or heralded a new phase in the war that would present a meaningful challenge to the Syrian government’s air supremacy.
Debate has raged since the start of the insurgency over whether Western and Arab nations should provide Syria’s rebels with portable antiaircraft missiles, often called Manpads. Some fear that such weapons could be smuggled away from the conflict and later used by terrorists against civilian airliners.
Manpads funneled by the United States to Pakistan helped Afghan rebels turn the tide against the Soviet Union in the Afghan war of 1980s. But that example is full of ambivalence — often cited in the Syria debate — because it led to an extended buyback program and decades of worry after Islamist militias, which eventually collaborated with Al Qaeda, prevailed over the Soviet-backed government in Kabul.
“Once these weapons are outside of government control, it is often extremely difficult to track their movement and control who has access to them,” said Matthew Schroeder, an analyst who studies missile proliferation at the Federation of American Scientists in Washington.
The rebels have slowly been acquiring them nonetheless, including from Syrian military stock captured in battle, and according to the unconfirmed accounts of some rebel commanders, via smuggling from outside.
Tuesday’s helicopter downing occurred not far from a large military base outside Aleppo, which rebels overran last week. It comes after a monthlong string of rebel raids on air bases, followed by their ransacking for weapons.
Andrew J. Tabler, a Syria analyst at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, called the use of the missile “a big deal, but not a surprising deal,” and said it appeared to confirm one of two things: weapons seized from bases are functional, or that there has been truth to the quiet talk that after the recent meeting in Doha, Qatar, to reorganize the Syrian opposition into a new coalition, outside countries would provide more sophisticated weapons to the rebels.
Since that, several Arab countries and France have recognized the coalition as the legitimate representative of the Syrian people, perhaps making it more politically palatable to provide rebels with the weapons.
In interviews over the past months, Syria’s rebel have described a concerted effort to acquire and master such weapons. Last month, a rebel commander in Idlib said that he had received a small quantity of Soviet heat-seeking missiles dating to 1974 and that one had been used to shoot down a helicopter. That downing could not be independently confirmed.
He also said his fighters had seized numerous heavy machine guns from government bases and that more weapons had been delivered from Libya via Qatar. He said rebels’ tactics and skills were improving. “They know how and where to set or position the launchers,” he said.
A fighter in Damascus, Mohammed Moaz, said in an interview last month that rebels had formed an antiaircraft battalion of defected pilots and soldiers armed with missiles taken from bases raided east of Damascus. “Pilots are giving training to civilians,” he said. “It’s a qualitative improvement. Soon you’re going to hear more news about downing MIGs in the capital.”
Still, the continued dangers of government airstrikes were visible in areas other than Aleppo. In Idlib, rebels accused the authorities of targeting civilians working on the fall olive harvest when an airstrike hit an olive press “filled with people,” killing at least 20 and wounding 50, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a group based in Britain, and the Local Coordination Committees, which rely on local activists for their reports.
Citing a witness, an activist in Idlib also suggested that the crowd had been targeted. Planes took three passes over the area, first striking a farm close to the press but killing no one, he said; on the next pass they struck the olive press; and on the third run they targeted a grove where people were picking olives, killing eight women.
Another activist in the area who gave only the name Alaa said cluster bombs had been dropped onto the area and some had not exploded, creating an enduring hazard in the groves.
