Syrian rebels downed a warplane over Hammuriyeh on Wednesday, shortly after an air strike killed at least 14 people and wounded dozens more in the Damascus province town, a watchdog and activists said.

Amateur video shot by activists and distributed by the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights showed a warplane firing from the sky and then going down in flames after apparently being hit. A Syrian footballer was killed and four others wounded on Wednesday when two mortars smashed into a stadium in central Damascus, a sports official told AFP. The official, speaking on condition of anonymity, named the dead footballer as Yussef Sleiman, aged 23, and said he played for the Homs-based Al-Wathba team. Four other footballers were injured, he said, adding that they played for Al-Nawair team, from the central city of Hama.

Lacking sophisticated weaponry, rebels fighting President Bashar al-Assad’s regime have frequently used heavy machineguns to shoot down warplanes deployed to strike insurgent enclaves across the country.The air strike killed 12 men, a woman and a child, said the Britain-based watchdog which relies on a network of activists, medics and lawyers on the ground for its information. A video filmed by activists in Hammuriyeh and distributed on Facebook showed residents in the aftermath of the strike pouring water on a burning corpse on the ground, and another two in destroyed vehicles.

Elsewhere, clashes raged between rebels and troops in the northern province of Aleppo, days after rebels launched an assault to seize the international airport and other air bases in the region. Activists say the rebels’ assault is aimed at stopping warplanes from taking off, and at seizing ammunition, while rebels say it is part of a bid to expel troops from the north.

In the past week, rebels have captured air bases at Al-Jarrah, Hassel and Base 80, as well as an important checkpoint near the international airport. “When the Free Syrian Army manages to free all the border crossings in the north and the airports in Aleppo, the area will fall completely out of regime control,” rebel commander in the northern province, Colonel Abdel Jabbar al-Okaidi, told AFP by phone. The UN says more than 70,000 people have been killed in Syria’s nearly two-year war, most of them civilians. According to a preliminary toll by the Observatory at least 107 people were killed in violence across Syria on Wednesday, among them 54 civilians.

The rebel Free Syrian Army on Wednesday threatened to shell positions of the powerful Hezbollah group in neighbouring Lebanon after accusing it of firing across the border into territory it controls. “In the past week... Hezbollah has been shelling into villages around Qusayr from Lebanese territory, and that we cannot accept,” General Selim Idriss, the FSA’s chief of staff, told AFP on the phone, adding that the rebels have given Hezbollah a 48-hour deadline to stop the attacks.

Lebanon is sharply divided over the Syrian conflict, with the Sunni-led March 14 movement supporting the revolt against President Bashar al-Assad and the Shia Hezbollah and its allies backing the regime.Russia on Wednesday urged the warring sides in Syria to halt their almost two-year conflict and start talks, warning that seeking a military settlement risked mutual destruction. “It’s time to end this two-year conflict,” Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said after a meeting with Arab League chief Nabil al-Arabi and other top Arab diplomats.

“Neither side can allow itself to bet on a military settlement as this is a path to nowhere, a path to mutual destruction,” he said. Lavrov, who on Monday is due to host Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Muallem for crucial talks, said Moscow was working to encourage dialogue between the rebels and regime of President Bashar al-Assad.

British Foreign Secretary William Hague also discussed Syria’s bloody conflict on Wednesday with Qatar’s crown prince during a visit to the gas-rich Gulf country, the official QNA news agency reported. Qatar’s Crown Prince Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani met with Hague in Doha, where they “discussed cooperation between their countries as well as regional developments, mainly in Syria,” said QNA. The meeting comes two days after European Union foreign ministers stopped short of meeting Britain’s demand to lift an arms embargo on Syria but agreed to allow “non-lethal” aid and “technical assistance” to flow to the opposition.

After weeks of “divisive” talk on whether to arm Syria’s rebels, the ministers agreed to renew sanctions against President Bashar al-Assad until the end of May that notably bar the supply of any lethal weaponry to the country - regime or rebel.