“Speaking a day after his nation and Russian Federation agreed to tighter cooperation combating ISIS, French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said ground troops would be necessary to defeat the group, but the soldiers wouldn’t be French”.
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The latest alleged civilian casualties came as British MPs debated David Cameron’s proposal to extend RAF air strikes from Iraq into Syria.
But Isil’s attacks in Paris, which left 130 people dead earlier this month, appear to have changed the French calculation, drawing its focus away from Assad and onto the war against Isil in Syria, where western officials say the coordinated killings were planned.
“Vienna talks can not go ahead productively without such a list of terrorists and a list of opposition groups”, Lavrov said, adding that the lists should be vetted by the U.N. Security Council.
Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Moallem scoffed at those who call on Assad to step down, comparing them to “those who dream of the devil in heaven”. The school, like others in Raqqa, has been taken over by Islamic State.
France has been staunchly opposed to the continued rule of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, and prosecutors in Paris have opened a criminal inquiry into torture and human rights abuses under his regime.
“We – Germany, France, Russia and Ukraine – hold meetings”.
An ISIS-affiliated agency, Aamaq, published a video purporting to show nighttime explosions that lit up the Raqqa sky.
As he made a whirlwind diplomatic tour this week seeking support to build a military coalition to crush IS, French President Francois Hollande has made clear that “France’s real enemy in Syria is Daesh”.
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Also Friday, the Syrian army repelled an attack by ISIS on the Deir al-Zor axes and in the direction of the city’s military airport, killing a number of militants, according to Hezbollah’s Media War Center. Said Hollande on Thursday after a working visit to the Russian President Vladimir Putin, both countries would share in the future their intelligence about the IS and other rebel groups to proceed more effectively when their bombing in Syria.
