Russian Federation bombed Syria for a third day on Friday, mainly hitting areas held by rival insurgent groups rather than the Islamic State fighters it said it was targeting and drawing an increasingly angry response from the West.
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On Thursday, the ministry said it has damaged or destroyed 12 targets.
Russian unmanned aerial vehicles continue to monitor the areas under control of the Islamic State group, the statement said.
Syria’s main opposition group accused Moscow of killing 36 civilians in the central province of Homs on Wednesday, but the Kremlin has denied any civilians were among the dead.
President Barack Obama, wary of military commitments in the Middle East after America’s costly war in Iraq, warned President Vladimir Putin he was defending a crumbling authoritarian ally and could be sucked into a “quagmire”.
A joint statement by France, Turkey, the U.S. Germany, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Britain expressed concern that Russia’s actions will “only fuel more extremism and radicalization”.
In an interview with BBC2’s Newsnight, Lt Gen Sir Simon Mayall painted a picture of the United Kingdom being in a strategic muddle over Syria and described Russia’s intervention as “hugely significant”.
“It’s only strengthening ISIL, and that’s not good for anybody”, Obama said.
But Turkey and several of its Western allies have claimed that they instead hit moderate groups fighting Assad’s regime.
A U.S.-led coalition urged Moscow to halt any attacks on the Syrian opposition and focus on Islamic State targets.
Obama on Friday pushed back on “half-baked solutions” or those “trying to downplay the challenges” of the situation in Syria, saying that Putin went into Syria “not out of strength but weakness” to protect and boost his “client” Assad with “his own planes and his own pilots”.
The Russian air raids on Daesh bases come as the U.S. and its allies including the Persian Gulf Arab kingdoms – which have actively supported the foreign-backed war in Syria since 2011 – have been involved in airstrikes against alleged Daesh militants in Syria without authorization from the Syrian government.
Two Syrian regions were hit; the Idlib province in the country’s northwest and the Hama province in the centre, which had been targeted in previous Russian airstrikes.
Russian President Putin, French President Francois Hollande and German Chancellor Angela Merkel discussed Syria during a peace summit on Ukraine Friday.
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Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov insisted Moscow was targeting the same terror groups as the US-led coalition, including IS and al-Qaeda’s Syrian affiliate, the Al-Nusra Front.
