SYRIA: War Plane Crashes Into Syrian Market

At least 27 dead after war plane crashes into Syrian market.

At least a dozen people were killed and others wounded when a Syrian war plane crashed in a residential area in the country during air strikes on rebel fighters, activists said.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights and the Local Coordination Committees said there were at least 12 casualties after the incident in Ariha on Monday.

The town, once a government stronghold, was captured by opposition fighters and Islamic militants in May.

Syrian vendors prepare sweets ahead of celebrations of Eid al-Fitr at the al-Jazmatia market in the al-Midan neighbourhood of Damascus.
Left-wing rotesters with their face hidden, wait in front of a barricade during clashes with Turkish riot police in Istanbul’s Gazi district.

Lebanon’s Hizbullah deputy leader Sheikh Naim Qassem speaks as Syrian foreign minister Walid al-Moualem (centre) and Iran’s minister of culture Ali Jannati listen during the International Media Conference Against Terrorism in Damascus.

The Observatory and the Local Coordination Committees said that at the time of the crash, the town was under attack by the air force of embattled Syrian president Bashar al-Assad.

The plane crashed in a busy market in the centre of the town, destroying several homes.

An amateur video posted online by activists showed several damaged buildings, as well as parts of the plane that crashed.

Syria’s civil war began in March 2011. The United Nations says the war has killed more than 220,000 people and wounded at least 1 million.

At least 27 people were killed and dozens injured when a Syrian army fighter jet crashed into a busy marketplace in the rebel-held northwestern town of Ariha on Monday.

Most of the dead were civilians on the ground in the Idlib provincial town that fell to a coalition of Islamist insurgents in May, according to the Britain-based Observatory for Human Rights, which tracks violence across Syria.

Scores were also injured, according to the monitor and witnesses. There was no immediate reaction from the Syrian army.

Syrian vendors prepare sweets ahead of celebrations of Eid al-Fitr at the al-Jazmatia market in the al-Midan neighbourhood of Damascus.

Left-wing rotesters with their face hidden, wait in front of a barricade during clashes with Turkish riot police in Istanbul’s Gazi district.

Turkey accused of Syria shelling by Kurdish fighters.

Lebanon’s Hizbullah deputy leader Sheikh Naim Qassem speaks as Syrian foreign minister Walid al-Moualem (centre) and Iran’s minister of culture Ali Jannati listen during the International Media Conference Against Terrorism in Damascus.

The military plane had dropped a bomb in the heart of the city centre main commercial street where shopkeepers open in the early morning before crashing in the middle of the marketplace, two witnesses said.

“The plane had dropped a bomb on the main Bazaar street at low altitude only seconds before it crashed,” said Ghazal Abdullah, a resident who was close to the incident. The Observatory said the jet was not shot down. Fighting has intensified of late in rural Idlib province between government forces and an insurgent grouping called Jaish al Fateh, or Army of Conquest, which includes Syria’s al-Qaeda offshoot Nusra Front.

Ariha’s fall had left the insurgents in control of most of Idlib province, which borders Turkey and neighbours Latakia, the heartland of president Bashar al-Assad’s Alawite sect, on the Mediterranean coast.

Most of the rich agricultural region, however, has since come under heavy aerial bombardment by Dr Assad’s forces in a counter-offensive to regain lost ground. The army has fought back using heavy air strikes to beat back insurgent advances into the mountains of Latakia province that brought them closer to government-held coastal areas north of the capital Damascus.

Syria’s western flank, fringing both the Mediterranean coast and the Lebanese border, contains major cities including Damascus and is seen as crucial for Dr Assad’s hold on power.