Human rights groups and media outlets are calling renewed attention to the use of the helicopters and jets by the Syrian military. Syrian air assets have been critical in efforts by the Bashar al-Assad regime to limit rebel military gains — this week saw a new air offensive in the country’s south — and rebels have sought to circumscribe the regime’s ability to leverage those assets. Attacks on airports have largely been repulsed, while rebel forces have been able to shoot down helicopters on the battlefield but only intermittently.

New documentation highlights the extent to which Damascus has deployed its aircraft, including for use against civilians. An 80-page report released yesterday by Human Rights Watch blames the Syrian government for strikes that have killed upwards of 4,300 Syrians since last summer. The report is has been described as the “most comprehensive” study of the country’s air force operations since last summer. HRW — a group that has, if anything, been criticized for historically ignoring Syrian atrocities — documented more than 50 cases. Many of the strikes did not target battlefields, but were in regions under firm opposition control and which had seen no recent ground fighting.

Meanwhile, PBS Frontline released video of an October 2012 air strike on a Syrian village that killed 17 people. The footage, shot by filmmaker Olly Lambert as he was recording an interview with a Syrian rebel commander, begins prior to the blast and continues for an hour.

The willingness of the Assad government to deploy heavy air assets against Syrian civilians sits uneasily with the evaluation of many foreign policy specialists, unpacked throughout the mid-to-late 2000s, to the effect that the regime was prepared to liberalize and move toward the West.