"Here is the pilot who was shelling houses of civilians!" someone says off-camera. "The heroes of Darret Ezza shot down his plane!"

In addition to the jet brought down Wednesday, the rebels say they have shot down two helicopters since Tuesday night. Rebel video showed one helicopter exploding in midair, but CNN could not independently confirm the authenticity of the footage.

The claims of success follow the capture of a key Syrian air force installation last week. Rebel fighters who overran the base reported finding more than 300 Soviet-era anti-aircraft missiles, along with heavy machine guns, rockets and even tanks.

About half the shoulder-fired missiles were inoperable, but the rebels soon posted video instructing viewers how to handle the ones that worked. Syrian commanders often kept the trigger components separately to prevent the weapons from being used if they were captured.

The installation housed troops from the Syrian army's 46th Regiment. Rebel forces surrounded the base for two months, harassing the troops inside with sniper fire and waiting for them to weaken, Hussein al-Shule said.

"The government will try to airdrop supplies from helicopter. They did not dare land," al-Shule said. "Most times they would miss, and we would take the food. It was inedible."

Opposition says 157 killed Wednesday

The claims came on a day when opposition activists said another 160 people were killed in the country's civil war, which dates back to March 2011. Of those, at least 15 were killed in shelling at Al-Ansari district in the city of Aleppo on Thursday, among the deaths were 5 children and two women, at least 20 others were wounded.

In Daraa, a car bomb exploded outside the house of the head main branch of the Baath party. Three guards were killed, and four were seriously injured.

By the end of Wednesday, at least 96 had died in the Damascus area, most of them in a single incident -- a pair of car bombings in the town of Jaramana that killed 77 people, according to the Local Coordination Committees of Syria, a network of opposition activists.

Jaramana, a small town surrounded by fields, has provided a refuge for pro-government Syrians displaced in the civil war. Its residents are a mix of Christians and Druze, the latter a minority offshoot of Shiite Islam. Women and children were among those killed there, the London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported.

Syria's Interior Ministry had conflicting numbers for the bombings, reporting 34 dead and 83 injured.

At the same time the car bombs went off, two explosive devices simultaneously detonated in the al-Nahda and al-Qerayyat neighborhoods, both of which are in the Damascus suburbs. Officials did not provide a casualty count in those areas.

Government officials blamed the attacks on terrorists, a term Syria routinely uses for rebel fighters and extremist elements in the country.

About 40,000 civilians have been killed since the first protests began against al-Assad's government, according to the opposition Center for Documentation of Violations in Syria. More than 380,000 Syrian refugees have fled to neighboring countries, creating humanitarian challenges abroad.

CNN cannot confirm claims by the government or the opposition because of government restrictions that prevent journalists from reporting freely within Syria.

Turkey's role

Turkey asked NATO Wednesday for Patriot missiles to bolster its air defenses against its southern neighbor, with which it shares an 822-kilometer (about 511-mile) border.

A letter to NATO included the "formal request" that the alliance send "air defense elements," according to a Turkish government statement that cited "the threats and risks posed by the continuing crisis in Syria to our national security."

The statement added that the NATO Council would convene "shortly" to consider the matter.