Senior Iranian officials have been in the country for several years.
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Already, at least one USA warplane has had to change its route to avoid a close encounter with Russian planes, the Pentagon has said. The officials were not authorized to discuss the matter publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.
This comes in the wake of a major ground offensive launched on Wednesday against anti-government forces. It made no mention of any missiles going astray, suggesting that the operation was fully successful.
On Thursday, the Russian Ministry of Defense employed a little sarcasm in its denial.
“NATO has already responded by increasing our capacity, our ability, our preparedness to deploy forces including to the south, including in Turkey”, the alliance’s chief said, adding that Russia’s air and cruise missile strikes were “reasons for concern”.
Secretary of State John Kerry spoke Thursday by telephone with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov for about a half-hour, focusing primarily on Syria and Ukraine, State Department spokesman John Kirby told reporters.
The representative, Major-General Igor Konashenkov, described the targets hit as controlled by Islamic State, also referring to them as belonging to “militants” and “terrorists”.
Rami Abdulrahman, head of the Syria Observatory for Human Rights, said Islamic State forces had taken over villages including Tel Suseen and Tel Qarah from other rebels groups just outside the city.
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The Iranian ministry of defense has denied a United States media claim that four of 26 cruise missiles fired from Russia’s Caspian fleet at Syria’s IS militants have fallen in Iran. The Iranian government, like the Syrian regime, tends to use “Daesh” and “terrorists” as catchall terms for all opponents of President Bashar al-Assad. However, there were other militants in northern Syria, such as Chechens, that Russian Federation might want to attack.
