Sunday’s airstrikes mark the first signs the nationwide ceasefire in Syria between the USA and Russian Federation is unraveling, particularly after the US carried out an “unintentional” strike that hit Syrian government soldiers Saturday.
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But the strike sent tensions soaring between Moscow and Washington, the chief sponsors of the truce, casting further into doubt the possibility that they will be able to work together to end Syria’s war.
It said it had targeted Tharda mountain where a Syrian government offensive was seeking to capture Islamic State positions overlooking the Deir ez-Zour military airport.
Gen. Igor Konashenkov said in an emailed statement that both “terrorists and the opposition” are using the truce to “boost their forces and prepare for renewed hostilities”.
Instead, an errant strike Saturday by the US-led coalition against the Islamic State mistakenly killed dozens of Syrian government soldiers, exposing a lack of trust between the two powers.
Iran, another close ally of Syria’s government, also condemned the US raid, saying it violated Syria’s sovereignty and “showed that terrorist groups enjoy USA support in Syria”.
Syria called Saturday’s USA -led strikes on the outskirts of the eastern city of Deir el-Zour a “dangerous and blatant aggression against the Syrian Arab Republic and its army”.
With Valdimir Putin’s Russian Federation engaged in a proxy tussle with the US-led Western alliance for influence and for the moral high-ground in the long-running civil war in Syria, Saturday’s ill-directed airstrikes have become a public relations gift for Mr Putin as he seeks to depict the USA attacks on Islamic State as also being directed at the Moscow-backed Assad regime in Damascus.
Russian Federation said the situation in Aleppo was “especially tense” on Sunday, blaming the instability on rebels.
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry in turn told CNN that Russian Federation should do more to support the ceasefire and “stop the grandstanding, stop the showboating and get the humanitarian assistance going”.
Tensions between the USA and Russian Federation escalated on Sunday after the raid by the American-led coalition that killed dozens of Syrian soldiers the previous evening.
Australia’s rules of engagement were to target IS but it was a very complex environment.
A ministry statement on Sunday said that in an emergency U.N. Security Council session called following the airstrike, the United States took “an unconstructive and indistinct position”.
Sunday was the deadliest day of the truce so far, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, with 10 civilians killed in areas where the ceasefire was set to take hold. IS-linked media also reported the incident.
The al-Rahman Legion, part of a Free Syrian Army rebel alliance, said its fighters had destroyed a government tank and killed soldiers after government forces tried to storm Jobar for the second time this week.
French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault accused Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s government of undermining the ceasefire.
“We must not forget that it is first of all the regime, and it is always the regime, which has jeopardised the US-Russian ceasefire”, he said in NY, where world leaders are gathering for the UN General Assembly.
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Nine people including a child were killed Sunday when a pair of barrel bombs hit an opposition-held town in the southern province of Deraa, the Observatory said.
