Iran’s semi-official Fars news agency also said Gen. Farshad Hasoonizadeh, a former commander of Iranian paramilitary forces, was killed in Syria while fighting extremist terrorists, a reference to the Islamic State group.
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The United States and Russian Federation are conducting separate air campaigns in Syria, which they have said are targeting Islamic State.
A spokesman for the Islamic State group, Abu Muhammad al-Adnani, vowed in an audio message that Russian Federation, like the US, will be defeated.
With support from Russian air strikes, which began on September 30, and help from Lebanon’s Hezbollah and Iranian soldiers, the Syrian army is trying to drive insurgents from western areas crucial to Assad’s survival, and has recaptured a number of towns in the provinces of Hama and Latakia.
Eight senior figures from Islamic State were killed in the Iraqi air strike while meeting in an Iraqi town on Sunday, but Baghdadi did not appear to be among them, residents of the town and hospital sources said.
Security officials previously had not said how many suspects were arrested following Sunday’s raid of a Moscow apartment where explosives were found. In Iraq, four strikes near Ramadi destroyed six Islamic State buildings, two command and control nodes and five fighting positions, the Combined Joint Task Force said today. Russian Federation has denied the allegation.
Before the shelling, the demonstrators had gathered outside the embassy carrying posters showing Assad and Russian President Vladimir Putin, and waved the two countries’ flags.
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the rockets were fired from the eastern edges of the capital, where Islamist rebels are entrenched. This occurred when several hundred people got together to show their support for Moscow’s air war in Syria.
Russian authorities have said that about 2,400 Russians have joined ISIS militants and voiced concern that they may pose a threat when they return home.
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Following a similar statement by Putin, Kartapolov firmly ruled out Russian military involvement in any ground action in Syria.
