Abdurrahman said he was killed on the edge of the Kweiras military airbase, which the Islamic State group has besieged for months.
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Russian Federation will pay the price for launching air strikes to prop up the Assad regime, the U.S. defence secretary has warned. There was no independent confirmation of the death toll.
In a surprise attack, the Islamic State group seized a string of villages from rebels in Aleppo province Friday.
Kerry voiced concern that the “preponderance of targets” being struck by Russian military forces in Syria aren’t related to the Islamic State.
Despite the Russian action, the Islamic State group advanced today to the outskirts of Aleppo in an offensive that also took the jihadists to within a few kilometres (miles) of regime troops defending the city, said Rami Abdel Rahman of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. Al-Mayadeen, a Lebanese media outlet seen as close to Iran, said he died in Aleppo.
The assault focussed on western areas where rebel advances earlier this year had threatened the coastal region vital to President Bashar al-Assad’s support base. “Yes they are participating”. Iran is one of al-Assad’s main backers. Syrian troops launched an offensive last week in an attempt to break the siege.
“In coming days, the Russians will begin to suffer from casualties”.
USA and Russian warplanes are now flying missions over the same country for the first time since World War Two, risking incidents between the two air forces and their fast jets.
US officials said they believed four Russian cruise missiles bound for Syria had crashed en route in Iran.
The withdrawal came despite Ankara’s appeal for its North Atlantic Treaty Organisation allies to keep their Patriot missiles in the country, as Russia started air raids on Islamic State targets in Syria on September 30 and Russian fighters twice breached Turkish airspace on October 3 and 4.
Washington said it was pulling the plug on a short-lived $580 million program to train and equip units of fighters at sites outside of Syria, after its disastrous launch this year fanned criticism of President Barack Obama’s war strategy.
The Associated Press reported that under the new approach, the US would provide small arms and ammunition, as well as communications gear and limited training of rebel leaders, to enable established rebel groups to coordinate USA airstrikes in support of their ground operation. Many North Atlantic Treaty Organisation officials, including Stoltenberg, have expressed fears there could be an encounter, accidental or otherwise, between Russian planes and the air forces of the U.S.-led coalition attacking Islamic State in Syria.
French Rafale warplanes attacked an IS training camp in their stronghold of Raqqa overnight.
Hama province’s Ghab Plain lies next to a mountain range that forms the heartland of Assad’s Alawite sect.
Nor would the official say exactly what type of cruise missiles went down, except to say that they were among a salvo fired from Russian warships in the Caspian.
Iranian state television is reporting that a senior commander in Iran’s powerful Revolutionary Guard has been killed in Syria.
Hamedani is one of the most senior Guard commanders to be killed in Syria, and the second to be killed this year. He was a veteran commander who had an important role in Iran’s 1980-88 war with Iraq and was among top Iranian commanders coordinating fighting in Syria.
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The Observatory, which has a network of activists across Syria, said the Russian airstrikes in Idlib killed at least seven civilians Wednesday.
