Moscow was swift to deny there was any malfunction with them. CNN first reported the USA claims.
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Syrian troops and allied militia, backed by Russian air strikes and cruise missiles fired from warships, attacked rebels forces yesterday as the government extended a major offensive to recapture territory in the west of the country.
Russia, Iran, Iraq and Syria have set up an information center in the Iraqi capital city of Baghdad to share information about terrorist facilities in Syria.
The Russian Defense Ministry said it fired missiles from ships in the Caspian Sea for a second day and had hit weapons factories, arms dumps, command centers and training camps.
Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter sharply criticized the Russian operation at a news conference Thursday at North Atlantic Treaty Organisation headquarters in Brussels.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a monitoring group, described the attack as Isil’s most significant for months.
A week after Russian Federation surprised the USA and became overtly involved in the Syrian Civil War, senior US lawmakers have begun looking into whether intelligence agencies overlooked or misjudged warning signs of Moscow’s intentions, congressional sources told Reuters.
Cruise missiles normally are launched to avoid heavy air defenses that might pose danger to manned bombers.
Turkey will not allow the repeated violation of its airspace by the planes of the Russian Air Forces, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said earlier. He said that Russia’s response to this had been to intensify its airstrikes.
Moscow demanded Thursday that the US back up its claims – that Russian missiles were mistakenly dropped in Iran – with facts and hard evidence. Since then, the Pentagon has chiefly relied on bombers and armed drones. “Russian officials are accusing Islamic State fighters of hiding among the civilian population, and they say Russian warplanes have canceled attacks whenever there was a possibility of hurting non-combatants”. “Russia’s strategic interest and probably Iran’s strategic interest as well”. Iran is one of al-Assad’s main backers. One official said the USA wasn’t able to detect any casualties or damage from the errant strikes, suggesting they may have fallen harmlessly in Iran.
An Iranian official, Hamidreza Taraghi, who is close to the country’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, laughed at the report that missiles had crashed, calling it “complete nonsense”.
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President Vladimir Putin’s military mission in Syria is a sign of Russia’s weakness, not a show of its leadership, says President Obama.
