Syria Rebels Claim Downing of MiG over Idlib Province

Syrian rebels shot down a MiG fighter jet near a military airport in the northwest province of Idlib on Thursday, the Free Syrian Army chief of the province told Agence France Presse.

"I can confirm that a MiG was shot down this morning by our men using automatic weapons, shortly after taking off from Abu Zohur military airport in Idlib province. The two pilots who parachuted from the plane were captured," said Colonel Afif Mahmoud Suleiman, head of the Military Council in Idlib.

The claim could not immediately be verified.

On top of the regional pressure on Damascus, the U.N. Security Council was to meet later Thursday to tackle deteriorating humanitarian conditions inside Syria and along its borders, a day after President Bashar Assad rejected moves to create buffer zones.

The meeting comes as violence whipped through eastern suburbs of Damascus, where activists said pre-dawn clashes broke out between the army and rebels, a bloody day in which 44 civilians were killed in the capital alone.

The Syrian Revolution General Council, a network of local activists, said gunfire reverberated around the Qaboon district of eastern Damascus, where rebels earlier this week claimed to have shot down a helicopter.

The Local Coordination Committees, another activist network, said fighting also broke out in southern Tadamun neighborhood, where shelling and machinegun fire was heard.

In Deir al-Zour, eastern Syria, rebels sent mortars crashing into a military security headquarters in Albi Kamal town, while fierce clashes broke out in Deir al-Zour city near another military security headquarters, the Observatory said.

The Security Council meeting called by France is aimed at "appealing to world conscience and for mobilization" in the face of the Syrian humanitarian drama, a diplomat said in New York.

Turkey has floated the idea of creating buffer zones within Syria to receive those displaced by the conflict so they do not flood across the borders into neighboring countries.

Assad, however, scoffed at the idea in an interview Wednesday with pro-regime al-Dounia TV channel.

Syria's neighbors Jordan, Lebanon, Turkey and Iraq were all to send ministers to the meeting.