Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has expressed “regret” for any role Australia may have had in a botched Coalition operation in Syria which has killed more than 62 Syrian soldiers and injured dozens more. The cease-fire does not include IS and al-Qaida-linked militants.
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The seven-day ceasefire is supposed to end at midnight Sunday, according to a Syrian army statement issued last week.
The US Central Command said Saturday’s airstrike was “halted immediately” when US forces were informed by Russian Federation “that it was possible the personnel and vehicles targeted were part of the Syrian military”.
Konashenkov said Moscow still has not been able to contact the US-backed opposition to coordinate ceasefire efforts, despite Washington’s assurances.
The Syrian military said the deadly coalition airstrike hit a base in Deir el-Zour that was surrounded by IS, allowing the extremists to advance and overrun Syrian army positions in the area.
“But even the best military [personnel] can’t avoid accidents when fighting in such a complex environment including the US-led coalition, Russian military, the Syrian and Iraqi militaries as well as Islamic State and countless other actors”.
A ministry statement on Sunday said that in an emergency U.N. Security Council session called following the airstrike, the United States took “an unconstructive and indistinct position”.
The official said the aircraft were approved to strike what the US military believed were Islamic State fighting positions, weapons and equipment.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based monitoring group with contacts across Syria, cited a military source at Deir al-Zor airport as saying at least 90 Syrian soldiers had been killed.
With Valdimir Putin’s Russian Federation engaged in a proxy tussle with the US-led Western alliance for influence and for the moral high-ground in the long-running civil war in Syria, Saturday’s ill-directed airstrikes have become a public relations gift for Mr Putin as he seeks to depict the U.S. attacks on Islamic State as also being directed at the Moscow-backed Assad regime in Damascus.
French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault accused Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s government of undermining the ceasefire.
The Americans “not only turned out to be unable to give an adequate explanation of what happened, but also tried, as is their custom, to turn everything upside down”, the statement said.
The Observatory said that intense airstrikes by Russian warplanes had killed at least 38 IS fighters since Saturday.
ISIL fighters shot down a Syrian military plane in the eastern Syrian city of Deir Az Zor, the group’s Amaq news agency reported on Sunday.
“The amount of shelling by rebel groups against positions of Syrian government troops and of residential areas is increasing”, said defence ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov.
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A halt to fighting around Aleppo and the delivery of desperately needed humanitarian aid were key components of the fragile truce, which began on Monday evening. The Islamic State controls much of the province, although there are some scattered Syrian military installations.
