However, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which monitors the fighting, said there had been no significant advances by government forces backed by allied militia in areas where ground offensives were launched this week.
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Division 13’s Facebook page confirmed the strikes, saying the site had been totally destroyed and several fighters killed.
France is part of a broad, U.S.-led coalition trying to defeat the Islamic State and has provided weapons and other support for its preferred Syrian rebel groups.
In the meantime, the ISIS militant group reported Friday a rapid advancement toward the city of Aleppo in northern Syria, at a time the Western countries have accused Russian Federation once again of giving priority to support the Syrian regime in its air campaign, rather than fighting terrorism.
Insurgent groups advanced against Assad’s forces earlier this year, putting pressure on his coastal heartland in the west of the country.
The struggle to find a way to respond to the Russian strikes has become a source of tension within the administration, according to USA officials who said that CIA Director John Brennan has voiced frustration with US inaction as fighters trained and armed by the agency at secret camps in Jordan over the past two years face a Russian assault.
A senior regional official close to the Syrian government said: “The Iranians are at the heart of the battle, with strength and effectiveness”.
Pentagon spokesman Peter Cook said in a statement that the plan was to supply rebel groups so that they could “make a concerted push into territory still controlled by ISIL”.
With few options to prevent the Russian deployments and concern about risking a wider proxy war, some in the administration proposed taking “more of a wait-and-see attitude” to determine whether Russia would actually attack the Islamic State, said a USA official involved in the Syria discussions.
USA support would now focus on weapons, communications gear and ammunition, another Pentagon official said, speaking on condition of anonymity, adding the re-envisioned program would start in “days”.
US Defence Secretary Ash Carter said, however, on Friday in London that the United States had indications that Russian cruise missiles did malfunction. Only 10 percent of Russian airstrikes have targeted the Islamic State, officials estimate; the rest have gone against opposition groups opposed to Assad.
Towns and villages around the road have been a focus of Russian air strikes.
Securing those areas would help consolidate Assad’s control over Syria’s main population centres in the west of the country, far from the Islamic State strongholds in the east.
In this photo taken on Wednesday, October 7, 2015, Syrian army rocket launchers fire near the village of Morek in Syria.
The IRGC said one of its most senior generals, Hossein Hamedani, was killed near Aleppo late on Thursday.
“No one in Syria is going to just fight ISIL…it’s doomed to fail with these restrictions”, Republican Senator Lindsey Graham said on MSNBC, using an acronym for Islamic State. The conflict has killed 250,000 people and displaced millions, causing a refugee crisis in neighboring nations and in Europe.
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Meanwhile, Iraq’s Defense Ministry said Friday that it was not informed when Russian Federation launched 26 cruise missiles across its airspace this week, and it described the lack of coordination in the region’s increasingly cluttered skies as “dangerous”.
