Russian Federation said the raids destroyed a “chemical weapons factory” on Raqqa’s outskirts as well as a weapons storage facility and ISIL training camp to the north and southeast.
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The accusations came hours after the Russian military, which is fighting alongside Syrian government forces in the civil war, promised a daily, three-hour cease-fire for Aleppo to allow humanitarian aid into besieged areas. “We can deliver these within 24-48 hours – if we have safe access”.
United Nations special envoy Staffan de Mistura confirmed the global body’s experts were investigating reports of a gas, believed to be chlorine, being dropped on Aleppo.
Russian Federation said Thursday it would consider extending a three-hour a day humanitarian ceasefire around Aleppo, but all sides of the conflict continued clashes on the ground. Zaher al Saket, a Syrian brigadier general and defector, has investigated over 90 chlorine-based attacks from the Syrian regime, he told NPR.
Syrian’s state news agency said army troops seized territory south of Aleppo yesterday, adding that rebel fire killed four civilians in a government-held district. The Syrian government and Russian Federation have previously denied targeting medical facilities.
A medic at the hospital said they had received a lot of casualties, who were “all ages”, including children and elderly people.
Kafr Hamra is near the northern front line in the deeply divided city of Aleppo, where government troops have sealed the main route into opposition areas, effectively trapping almost 300,000 residents.
A series of air strikes on Friday in opposition areas in Syria’s northern Aleppo province killed at least 18 people, including children and two hospital staffers, when the missiles hit an open market, a women and children’s hospital and a village, activists and rescue workers said.
“We call for the immediate cessation of air raids on civilian targets in Aleppo. We said we have a common enemy which we can struggle against together”, Cavusoglu said, using an Arabic-language acronym for ISIS.
Daesh is an Arabic language acronym for the Islamic State group.
Government and opposition forces have both denied using chemical weapons during Syria’s conflict.
In September 2013, after hundreds of people died in alleged sarin gas attacks on Ghouta, outside Damascus, Syria acceded to the Chemical Weapons Convention and President al-Assad pledged to destroy the country’s stockpile of prohibited chemical agents.
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported earlier that government barrel bombs struck the rebel-held Zabadieh neighborhood in Aleppo, killing two people and afflicting several others with breathing difficulties.
But it made no mention of the “humanitarian windows” announced by Russian Federation.
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Cavusoglu also said Turkey would resume airstrikes against IS targets in Syria, months after they were suspended amid the row with Moscow.
