The Russian Defense Ministry announced on Tuesday that it was using the Hamadan Airbase in western Iran to launch attacks on Daesh strongholds in Syria.
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Russia’s Defense Ministry said Tuesday that Russian warplanes have taken off from a base in Iran to target Islamic State fighters in Syria.
It’s the first time Moscow has struck targets inside Syria from a third country.
The strikes with high-explosive fragmentation bombs “destroyed two command centres and large field camps for training terrorists in the area of the town of Deir Ezzor, killing more than 150 fighters including foreign mercenaries”, the ministry said.
Other allegations were made against both nations on Tuesday. Jabhat al-Nusra is the former name of Jabhat Fatah al-Sham, a powerful rebel jihadist group previously affiliated with al Qaeda.
Iran allowing Russian warplanes to take off from its territory to bomb targets in Syria was an unprecedented move, underscoring the deepening cooperation between two powerhouses heavily invested in the Syrian civil war.
“Generally, there is no stationing of Russian forces in the territory of the Islamic Republic of Iran”, Boroujerdi said.
Following the announcement, Secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council Ali Shamkhani said that Iran and Russian Federation are engaged in “strategic” cooperation and exchange of capacities to fight terrorism in Syria.
The Tupolev-22M3 is “a fairly large, supersonic, long-range, strategic bomber”.
Russias long-range Tu-22M3 bombers delivered their first airstrikes on terrorist targets in Syria operating from an Iranian airbase. But the raids appeared to signal a budding alliance that would expand Russia’s military footprint in the region. “This airfield in Iran is only 900km away”, Al Jazeera’s Rory Challands, reporting from Moscow, said. “It’s not a lot of time, but it’s enough” to maintain safety in the airspace over Iraq and Syria, he said.
Earlier, analysts had used internet-based flight-tracking websites to follow Russian military aircraft streaming into Hamedan.
“It’s not just Russian planes touching down in Iran”. “They consider this operation as another bargaining chip in their negotiations with the West”. The bombing runs from a base near the Iranian city of Hamedan, 175 miles southwest of Tehran, may have been a reminder to the Obama administration that Moscow could be cozying up to Iran if Washington doesn’t come around. He said that Moscow and Tehran “enjoy strategic cooperation in the fight against terrorism in Syria and share their facilities and capacities to this end”, official state media reported.
Also in Syria, Garver confirmed that a convoy of hundreds of ISIS fighters using civilians as human shields was allowed to exit the key northeastern stronghold of Manbij, which fell last weekend to forces of the US -backed Syrian Democratic Forces.
Zakaria Malahifi, political officer of an Aleppo-based rebel group, Fastaqim, said he could not confirm if the newly deployed Russian bombers were in use, but said airstrikes on Aleppo had intensified in recent days.
The rights group said it had documented the use of incendiary weapons at least 18 times since June that had resulted in more than a dozen injuries.
It could not confirm whether those airstrikes were carried out by Russian or by Syrian government forces, which also carry out regular airstrikes and have less accurate targeting abilities than Russia.
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Strikes in the Tariq al-Bab and al-Sakhour districts of northeast Aleppo had killed around 20 people, while air raids in a corridor rebels opened this month into opposition-held eastern parts of the city had killed another nine, the observatory said.
