The Islamic State group has strongholds in Raqqa and Aleppo, while the al-Qaida-linked Nusra Front has a strong presence in Idlib.
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The fighting comes as the Russian airstrikes appear to have emboldened Syrian troops to launch a ground offensive after suffering a string of setbacks in northwestern Syria over the past few months.
The Russian defense ministry on Tuesday dismissed reports that its planes had launched airstrikes against the Syrian city of Palmyra as false, the TASS news agency reported.
The Russian minister of defense, Sergei K. Shoigu, told President Vladimir V. Putin in a televised meeting that the missiles had struck 11 targets in Syria. No civilians were harmed in the strike, he said. “Four destroyers launched 26 Kalibr sea-based cruise missiles at 11 targets”.
Shoigu also said Russian Federation was ready to agree a document with the United States to coordinate actions in Syria.
The Syrian wing of the banned Muslim Brotherhood also issued a statement, calling on the Syrians to wage jihad against what they called the “flagrant Russian occupation of Syria”. Russian Federation has so far refused to make a distinction between the Army of Conquest and the Islamic State, labeling both groups as terrorists.
Russia’s Wednesday strikes targeted the towns of Kafr Zita, Kafr Nabudah, al-Sayyad and the village of al-Lataminah in Hama province and the towns of Khan Shaykhun and Alhbit in Idlib, the Observatory said.
Activist Ahmad al-Ahmad, who is now in Idlib, says government troops are “heavily” shelling central areas after rebels attacked an army post and destroyed a tank.
“We are still losing lives and losing billions of dollars in oil revenues by purchasing arms from United States, but what we really got from them was only promises and dozens of delayed arms deals”, said Zamili. Russia, which backs Syrian President Bashar Assad, has hit Western-backed rebels fighting Assad.
“I can confirm that we have seen a substantial buildup of Russian forces in Syria”, Stoltenberg said at a news conference Monday.
Major General Qassem Soleimani’s visit to Moscow was the first step in planning for a Russian military intervention that has reshaped the Syrian war and forged a new Iranian-Russian alliance in support of Assad.
The strikes, spanning nearly 1,000 miles of precision flight, were by far the longest-range attack by Russian forces in modern history.
“They continue to hit targets that are not ISIL”, Carter said, using an acronym for the Islamic State group.
The Pentagon says at least one US military aircraft changed its route over Syria recently to avoid coming dangerously close to Russian warplanes.
“We continue to believe that having these talks with Russian Federation about air safety would serve a useful goal,” he said.
Washington is not prepared to cooperate with Russia’s strategy that is “tragically flawed,” he said.
Since September 2014, the coalition has been hitting Islamic State positions mostly in northern and eastern parts of Syria, as well as in Iraq. The USA maintains that the only route to peace in Syria is to remove Assad from power.
Davis said that USA and Russian military officials would hold a second round of formal talks aimed at keeping their forces in Syria from interfering with one another, a process known as “de-conflicting”. He could not provide details, including how many times this has happened.
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Russian warplanes based in Syria have twice violated the airspace of neighboring Turkey, a North Atlantic Treaty Organisation member, adding to concerns about the potential for an inadvertent collision or confrontation. Turkey scrambled F-16s in response and also summoned the Russian ambassador to lodge protests. But a spokeswoman for the foreign ministry, Maria V. Zakharova, said on Wednesday that Russian Federation had never made a secret of its policy of aiding the Syrian military.
