News reports say Moscow has set up a joint information center with Syria, Iraq and Iran in Baghdad to help coordinate action against the Islamic State, and Russian Federation has established a communications channel with the U.S.to prevent “incidents” between the two countries’ warplanes in Syria, according to the BBC.
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And on Thursday, Mr. Putin’s first air strikes appeared to go after not Islamic State, but other groups fighting Mr. Assad.
“We are not going to cooperate with a Russian campaign to simply try to destroy anybody who is disgusted and fed up with Mr. Assad’s behavior”, Obama said, adding, “Eventually, Syria will fall”.
In the short term, Russia’s military will provide desperately needed air support and boost the morale of Syria’s battered army.
Western and Gulf countries insist Assad must step down after presiding over more than four years of a civil war that has killed more than 240,000 people.
“Terrorism can not be fought only from the air, and all of the previous operations to combat it have only served its spread and outbreak”, al-Moallem said.
U.S. President Barack Obama said Friday that the United States would not conduct “a proxy war” with Russian Federation in Syria.
Assad said it was not for outside powers to decide Syria’s fate. [Jabhat] al-Nusra is on the US [State Department’s] list of terrorist organizations…. Secondly, it is delaying the political solution. “Otherwise it will have no value,” he said.
It bombed the country for a third straight day on Friday, but it has mainly hit areas held by rival insurgent groups rather than the Islamic State fighters it said it was targeting, drawing an increasingly angry response from the West.
A member of the Russian general staff said the lraids had forced hundreds of IS militants to flee. Judging from Muslim’s interview with Al-Monitor, the Russian intervention has in a few respects eased their concerns.
Assault aircraft from at Khmeimim airbase have also inflicted airstrikes against terrorist forces near Jisr al-Shughur in Idlib province, destroying vehicle storage depots used for organizing terror attacks.
This image taken from video provided by the Syrian activist media group Qasioun News, which has been verified and is consiste…
“As you can see, a direct hit on the installation resulted in the detonation of explosives and multiple fires”.
Meanwhile, the US-led coalition has carried out 16 more air strikes against IS militants, weapons and buildings in Syria and Iraq over the weekend.
Assad said that the West’s failure to achieve its goals in Syria has forced them to change their positions on excluding him from a future political settlement. Vladimir Yevseyev, an expert on Middle East military issues at the Institute of World Economy and worldwide Relations in Moscow, said Syrian forces would likely attack in the countryside of Hama and Homs provinces, parts of which are under the control of an assortment of moderate, Islamist and al-Qaida-linked rebels. “The only goal that was realized…is the destruction of much infrastructure in Syria, shedding lots of blood”. Of course, western motives for destabilizing Syria and backing violent “rebels” to kill Syrian soldiers and overthrow the Syrian government are never selfish, but only benign and humanitarian.
“In reality, they are the biggest contributor for reaching this stage by supporting terrorism and imposing a siege on Syria,” he said, in reference to Western countries.
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Over a half million people have crossed the Mediterranean to Europe this year, more than double the figure for all of 2014, most of whom are Syrians.
