OREANDA-NEWS. RIA Novosti news agency reports with reference to a Syrian military source that a helicopter of the government army was shot down in Idlib Governorate, two pilots died.

“The helicopter exploded in the air, which led to the death of its commander, Colonel Isa Iz al-Din, and his assistant, Captain Bashar Mahmoud Samra, while the fate of two others on board the helicopter remains unknown,” a journalists’ interlocutor said. He specified that the aircraft was shot down with a missile by the militants of the terrorist group Jabhat al-Nusra.

Earlier, the Turkish Ministry of Defense reported about the retreat of the Syrian army from the village of Al-Nayrab and the crash of a helicopter in this area.

Amid the aggravation of the situation in Idlib, a telephone conversation between Russian and Turkish presidents Vladimir Putin and Recep Tayyip Erdogan will take place on Tuesday. This was reported by the press secretary of the Russian leader Dmitry Peskov.