The helicopter was said to have crashed close to Douma, a suburb（郊区） east of Damascus. 

 

At the end of August, rebels said they shot down a helicopter on the outskirts¹ of Damascus. 

 

The government has increasingly been using helicopters and other aircraft in its fight against the rebellion which started last year. 

 

There was further heavy fighting in Damascus and the northern city of Aleppo on Wednesday.

 

Amnesty International warned that indiscriminate air and artillery² strikes were causing a dramatic rise in civilian³ casualties in Idlib and Hama.

 

In the Dutch capital, The Hague, a group of financial experts, foreign diplomats⁴ and Syrian defectors is meeting to look for new economic ways of weakening Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's grip on power. 

 

The group, called the Friends of Syria, is discussing how to make sanctions on the Syrian government more effective and how to track down the Assad government's hidden financial assets.

 

Dutch Foreign Minister Uri Rosenthal at the meeting said that one of the problems was that not all countries implemented⁵ sanctions on Syria.

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