Australian Department of Defense issued a statement on Sunday, confirming that Australian aircraft involved in the us -led airstrikes in Syria which killed more than 60 Syrian military personnel.
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Late on Saturday, coalition planes hit Syrian army positions at a military airport near Deir ez-Zor, which is besieged by Daesh jihadist group, outlawed in both the United States and Russian Federation.
The Pentagon later said in a statement that the attack had been launched against wrong targets and that they “believed they were striking a Daesh” position.
The U.S. military said it may have unintentionally struck Syrian troops while carrying out a raid against the Islamic State group on Saturday, threatening an already fragile U.S. and Russian-brokered cease-fire that has largely held despite dozens of alleged violations on both sides. He said the US has not even tried to get the opposition to hold its fire.
The Syrian military said it viewed the strike as evidence the United States and the coalition support ISIS.
Central Command said Syria is a complex situation, with a variety of military forces and militias in close proximity, “Coalition forces would not intentionally strike a known Syrian military unit”, it added.
Amaq, a news outlet affiliated to Daesh, said in an online statement released on Sunday that the jet came down in Jebel Tharda area, near the Dayr al-Zawr military airport.
Russia’s foreign ministry said the strike jeopardised the US-Russian brokered truce and accused the coalition of being on the “boundary between criminal negligence and direct connivance with Islamic State terrorists”.
The air strikes were called off after the Russians notified the Americans they were hitting the Syrian military. The advance regained territory lost to the terrorists Saturday when Syrian troops were hit with airstrikes by the US -led coalition.
After the confirmation of the attack by the Russian Defense Ministry, Russia called an urgent UN Security Council meeting.
Russia’s foreign ministry denounced the US position on the incident as “unconstructive and inarticulate”.
A Syrian boy carries a toy gun past a destroyed building in the northeastern Syrian city of Qamishli on September 13, 2016 as a truce brokered by Russian Federation and the United States saw guns fall silent at sundown the previous night.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said that at least 30 IS militants were killed in the army’s counter-attack. “It is always the regime of Bashar al-Assad”. The Russian Defense Ministry said on September 17 that 62 Syrian government soldiers had died.
On Sunday, the Sunni terror group shot down a regime warplane involved in an anti-ISIS operation in Deir Ezzor province, killing the pilot, state-run SANA news agency reported, citing a military source.
Australia also participated in the strikes and the Australian Department of Defence offered its condolences to the families of Syrian soldiers killed or wounded in the incident. Russia’s Foreign Ministry had similar words, according to spokeswoman Zakharova.
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However some violence has persisted across Syria and promised aid deliveries to besieged areas remain blocked with both sides accusing the other of bad faith.
