Russian Federation launched its air campaign last month saying it would target Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isil).
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“Their strategy in Syria is fundamentally flawed and the mistakes Russian Federation is making have consequences and will only inflame the Syrian civil war”, Carter said.
“IS has never been so close to the city of Aleppo, and this is its biggest advance towards” the country’s pre-war commercial capital, said Abdel Rahman, whose Britain-based group relies on a network of sources on the ground across Syria.
He also reiterated that the recent violations of Turkish airspace by Russian aircrafts are “unacceptable” and said North Atlantic Treaty Organisation is monitoring the situation closely.
An Iranian state television report said he was killed while “carrying out an advisory mission”, and the official IRNA news agency read a statement by the Guard in which it blamed IS for his death.
Russian Federation and Syria carried out what appeared to be the first major co-ordinated assaults on Syrian insurgents on Wednesday, targeting rebels in the West rather than Islamic State militants, a rights monitor said.
Iran is one of Syrian president Bashar Assad’s main allies.
With President Obama’s Syria policy under new scrutiny as Russian Federation takes a lead role in the conflict, administration officials said Friday that they will now scrap the Pentagon’s still-born program for training a “moderate” Syrian opposition rebel force – an effort that has cost millions over the past year but produced only a handful of combat-ready fighters. It said troops also seized the nearby Um Hartein village.
The fighting is concentrated in Hama and the northern Idlib provinces, where a consortium of mainstream rebels as well as al-Qaida’s branch in Syria, the Nusra Front, are operating.
In January, Brig. Gen. Mohammad Ali Allahdadi was killed in an Israeli airstrike in Syria that also killed six Lebanese Hizbollah fighters.
Shiite-dominated Iran is a staunch ally of Assad, sending Guards forces and military advisers to aid him against Sunni Muslim rebels seeking his overthrow.
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Although Moscow admitted it struck non-ISIL targets, calling them “other” terrorist groups, it continues to assert that there have been no Syrian civilian casualties during any of its operations.
