Iran’s Revolutionary Guards announced one of its senior commanders was killed by IS in the Aleppo region on Thursday, without revealing the exact circumstances.
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Russian officials said 26 cruise missiles were launched at 11 Islamic State targets, which officials said were destroyed without causing any civilian casualties.
“Russia has been enormously successful, has been absolutely brilliant in its tactical and strategic alliances with Syria and Iran”, said Scott Bennett, a former US Army psychological warfare officer.
Moscow says it is targeting mainly Islamic State militants, but US officials and Syrian rebels have said the strikes have hit mainstream rebels for the most part and are created to shore up Assad’s embattled government and troops.
The BBC’s Barbara Plett Usher in Washington says the Americans are rattled by the addition of cruise missiles to the air war over Syria, where the U.S. and its allies are also operating.
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.
In the last week, it has been widely reported that other rebel groups, included those backed and geared up by the US, are being targeted by Russian aircraft, now active in the skies over Syria. Gen. Mohammad Ali Allahdadi was killed in an Israeli airstrike in Syria that also killed six Lebanese Hezbollah fighters.
It has raised fears that Russian Federation, by hitting rebel groups that are fighting Isil as well as the regime, will inadvertently strengthen the hardline jihadists they say they want to crush.
The Observatory, which monitors the fighting, said it was the biggest advance by IS since it launched an offensive against rival rebels in Aleppo near the Turkish border in August.
“All our cruise missiles hit their target”, spokesman General Igor Konashenkov said.
“Any professional knows that during these operations we always fix the target before and after impact”.
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The U.S. was now looking at “different” ways to “enable capable, motivated forces on the ground to retake territory from ISIL and reclaim Syrian territory from extremism”, he added, using another acronym for IS.
