video transcript

A Syrian helicopter shot down by rebels, says the opposition. Reuters cannot independently verify the video, but footage posted online Monday purports to show rebels downing the aircraft over Menagh airport, near Aleppo. And this is what they may have used to bring it down. A rebel fighter from Aleppo's air defense battalion, which claimed responsibility for the attack, says it's a thermal rocket captured from Assad forces. (SOUNDBITE) (Arabic) FREE SYRIA ARMY FIGHTER, SAYING: "We have managed to surround Aleppo's Menagh airport for two months and today we downed a helicopter by a thermal rocket. And we will continue to impose a no-fly zone above Menagh airport until we take control of it." More footage also purports to show shelling in the city of Idlib, near Aleppo, and in a suburb of the capitol Damascus. The uprising against President Bashar al-Assad, now a civil war, has neared the two-year mark, leaving an estimated 70,000 dead.