But the U.S. says the coalition did inform Russian Federation of the forthcoming strike on what it thought was an Islamic State position and broke off the attack when Russian Federation said the targets were in fact Syrian troops.
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The Syrian government troops alone are observing a ceasefire agreement in the war-torn country brokered by Russia and the United States, the Russian Defense Ministry said Friday.
“Warplanes from the American coalition hit one of the Syrian army’s positions… near the Deir Ezzor airport”, the statement carried by state media said.
Laerke also clarified United Nations comments a day earlier, saying that the United Nations does not require authorization from Syria’s government for cross-border aid deliveries under the terms of a Security Council resolution from 2014.
The U.S. military stopped short of admitting it had hit Syrian forces.
“Warplanes from the worldwide anti-jihadist coalition carried out four air strikes today against Syrian forces surrounded by IS in the Deir Ezzor air base”, a Russian army statement said.
It called the strike a “serious and blatant attack on Syria and its military”, and “firm proof of the US support of Daesh”, using the Arabic acronym for IS. Daesh is an Arabic acronym for IS.
Russian Federation is a key backer of Syrian President Bashar Assad.
The Observatory said government forces and opposition fighters were ready to withdraw from the Castello road, a main artery into Aleppo, to hand it over to Russian troops.
“Since we could not agree on an approach to briefing the council that would not compromise the operational security of the arrangement, the meeting was canceled”, a spokesman for the U.S. mission said.
“No aid has arrived in Aleppo”.
As part of the truce deal, the rebels and the Syrian government are supposed to agree to the deployment of a security force to protect checkpoints along the route to Aleppo to ensure aid delivery to the city’s opposition sector, which has been besieged by Russian-backed government forces since July.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a British-based monitoring group with contacts across Syria, cited a military source at Deir al-Zor airport as saying at least 80 Syrian soldiers had been killed. It says two men were killed outside Damascus and a child was killed in Aleppo province.
Nour el-Din el-Zinki group says in statement Friday that their observation posts in the area are confirming that government forces are still on the Castello road. A video of the rescue mission shows bodies strewn across the ground.
Russia’s Defence Ministry said conditions in Syria were deteriorating, adding that it believed the ceasefire had been breached 199 times by rebels and saying the United States would be responsible if it were to collapse.
There have been a handful of violations on both sides, US State Department spokesman Mark Toner acknowledged.
However, he warned that the U.S. needed to use its influence with moderate opposition forces, to ensure that they separate themselves from groups linked to al-Qaeda.
Senior UN officials have gone public with the frustration over the Syrian government’s go-slow – holding up aid deliveries to areas where civilian have been living under siege for years.
Israel says its Iron Dome rocket defense system has intercepted a projectile fired from inside Syria into the Israeli-controlled part of the Golan Heights.
A senior Obama administration official said the U.S. has “relayed our regret” for the unintentional loss of life of Syrian forces. It quoted Russian Maj.
Over 2,000 people were killed in 40 days of fighting in Aleppo until the cease-fire went into effect Monday.
But there remains deep scepticism about whether the truce will hold.
The Fatah al-Sham Front, linked to al-Qaeda and previously known as the Nusra Front, is deeply embedded in rebel-held areas and fights alongside more moderate groups.
Aside from the reducing the bloodshed, the “second dividend” of the U.S. -Russia deal is humanitarian access, de Mistura told reporters in Geneva.
Wa’il Adil Hasan Salman al-Fayad, also known as “Dr. Wa’il”, was killed in a precision strike on September 7 near Raqa, the jihadists’ de facto Syrian capital, Cook said.
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“This comes from the problems the U.S.is facing on the Syrian track – they still can not separate the so-called healthy part of the opposition from the half-criminal and terrorist elements”, Putin said during a trip to Kyrgyzstan.
