DAMASCUS, Sept. 20 (Xinhua) -- A Syrian military gunship crashed Thursday near a countryside of the capital Damascus after partially colliding with a commercial plane and sliced its tail, the state media said, as the minister of national reconciliation said the army's operations against the armed militias are " satisfactory and progressive" and will achieve concrete results in less than a month.
Syrian Information Ministry said Thursday that a military gunship crashed over the restive Damascus' suburb of Douma due to an "aerial accident" after it hit a tail of a civilian airplane while flying at high altitude.
In a statement, the ministry said the civilian airbus landed peacefully and none of its passengers were hurt.
"All of them are in good health," the ministry said.
Meanwhile, a pro-government website said the armed insurgents fired at the gunship with long-range machinegun, prompting the fighter pilot to go as high as he could to avoid the shooting when he was surprised by the civilian plane and then made a curve to shun the collision but he slammed the tail of the airbus before he lost control over the gunship.
The pilot along with other three assistants were all killed, according to the pro-government report.
The armed insurgent groups have managed to drop a number of military gunships over the past months, according to activists.
The downing of the latest gunship indicates to the fact that the armed rebels are growing more resourceful.
Syria repeatedly accused Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar of feeding the armed movement in Syria with money and weapons.
Furthermore, the Syrian government charged that the al-Qaida fighters and other foreign jihadists are already on ground in Syria and are carrying out terrorist acts.
Earlier in the day, the state-run SANA news agency said more than 100 Afghani fighters had been killed in a "qualitative" operation carried out by Syrian army in northern Aleppo province.
The military showdown is mainly taking place in Aleppo and at a cluster of southern suburbs of Damascus, such as Hajar al-Aswad, Tadamun and al-Yarmouk camp for the Palestinian refugees, where the Syrian authorities said they have rounded up more than 100 " terrorists" on Thursday.
Also Thursday, the Syrian pro-government Sham FM radio said the Syrian troops destroyed three vehicles equipped with machine guns that belong to armed "terrorist groups" in the northeastern province of Raqqa, as activists alleged that a fuel station was blasted in Raqqa by the Syrian army's aerial shelling, adding that many people injured or killed.
Sham FM radio said the destroyed vehicles had been outfitted with DSHKA machine-guns at Tal Abyad area in Raqqa, adding that the troops also eliminated gatherings of armed insurgents at Tal- Asheq and Ein al-Arous in the same province.
Meanwhile, the Local Coordination Committees, an activists' network, said more than 70 injured people had reached the National Hospital in Raqqa due to the "intense aerial bombardment on a fuel station" in the battered area.
Other activists' groups said some 54 people had been killed.
Another opposition group, the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, placed the overall toll of Thursday's violence at 160 people, 104 of whom were unarmed civilians.
Yet such reports are impossible of being verified independently.
The clashes between the armed groups and the Syrian military have intensified lately, as the troops have been digging in their heels while the armed opposition has given no sign of backing down.
Syrian Minister of National Reconciliation Ali Haidar said Thursday that the military operation against the armed militia is "satisfactory and progressive" and will achieve concrete results in less than a month.
Haidar made the remarks at a press conference held in Damascus as the Syrian army is carrying "cleansing" campaigns in several hotspots across the battered country.
Commenting on the mission of the new UN-Arab League's joint special representative to Syria Lakhdar Brahimi, Haidar said Brahimi now is in the phase of collecting information to figure out how to tackle the crisis.
He added that Syria is "fully cooperating" with him.
Meanwhile, Haidar stressed that the Syrian administration is heading toward a political settlement, and the government wants to embark on a national dialogue.
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