Five Russians dead after their military helicopter is downed in Syria

Men inspect the wreckage of a Russian helicopter that was shot down in Syria's rebel-held Idlib province on August 1, 2016. Ammar Abdullah/Reuters

BEIRUT // Five people on board a Russian military helicopter were killed on Monday when it was shot down over Syria, in the single deadliest incident for Moscow since it intervened in the war.

Russia’s defence ministry announced the downing of the helicopter over Idlib province. It was carrying three crew and two officers.

“A Russian Mi-8 military transport helicopter was shot down from the ground after delivering humanitarian aid to Aleppo,” the ministry said.

The Kremlin said all five people on board were assumed dead.

“As far as we know from the information we’ve had from the defence ministry, those in the helicopter died, they died heroically, because they were trying to move the aircraft away to minimise victims on the ground,” said Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov.

It was not immediately clear who was responsible for shooting down the helicopter. Idlib is held almost entirely by a powerful coalition of Islamist and extremist forces including Jabhat Fateh Al Sham, which was formerly known as Jabhat Al Nusra before the group renounced its status as Al Qaeda’s Syrian affiliate.

The incident was the single deadliest attack on Russian forces in Syria since Moscow began its intervention in support of president Bashar Al Assad’s government last September.

It brought the total number of members of the Russian forces killed in Syria to 18.

* Agence France-Presse, with additional reporting by Associated Press