However, shortly after the bombing started Russian officials advised the multinational Combined Air Operations Centre that the targets may have been Syrian military personnel. Power said the USA “regrets” the loss of life, promising an investigation into the attack.
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“Russia really needs to stop the cheap point scoring and the grandstanding and the stunts and focus on what matters, which is implementation of something we negotiated in good faith with them”, Ms Power said.
The strike occurred Saturday in a part of eastern Syria that is not covered by the ceasefire, which was brokered between Washington and Moscow and came into effect on Monday.
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which relies on a network of activists inside Syria, said the US-led coalition struck army positions in Tharda mountain and a nearby artillery division, killing 90 troops and wounding 110.
It said the airstrikes were “on objective and planned in advance”, and killed dozens of Syrian soldiers.
Power said Zakharova should be embarrassed by that claim, while Churkin said Russian Federation had no “specific evidence” of the United States colluding with Islamic State militants.
She said the U.S. was investigating the airstrike and “if we determine that we did indeed strike Syrian military personnel, that was not our intention and we of course regret the loss of life”.
“We consider that such an incident with a lot of victims only came about due to a lack of understanding of the context by the coalition’s command, and because of the refusal by the U.S. side to coordinate its actions against terrorist groups in Syria with Russian Federation”.
However, local activists in Deir ez-Zor reported that the coalition strikes on Saturday also killed dozens of ISIS militants.
Regional partner Russian Federation is claiming 62 Syrian soldiers lost their lives and more than 100 are being treated for various conflict related wounds.
The Russian military said two F-16 and two A-10 jets flew into Syrian air space from neighboring Iraq to carry out the strikes.
The truce brought in relative calm to Syria, mainly to Aleppo, despite the fact that the government and Russian Federation have counted tens of breaches by the rebels.
The ministry’s statement, sent to the presidents of the United Nations and the UN Security Council, said American warplanes repeatedly attacked Syrian army positions on Saturday afternoon.
Defense Ministry spokesman Maj.
He said the timing of the USA airstrike is “frankly suspicious” because it came two days before the U.S. and Russian Federation were supposed to implement an agreement on military coordination in Syria.
“The bad news is that we are not using this window of opportunity so far to reach all of these places with humanitarian assistance”, Jan Egeland, adviser to the special envoy, said at a press briefing Thursday.
Moscow has itself accused rebels of breaking the truce and said Washington needs to do more to make them abide by its terms, including separating from the jihadist Jabhat Fateh al-Sham, which only broke formal allegiance to al Qaeda in July.
“I would be very interested to see how Washington is going to react”.
Implementing the truce has been complicated by the presence of militants not covered by the ceasefire and mainstream rebels on some of the same frontlines.
It added that the strike was a result of Washington’s “stubborn refusal” to co-operate with Moscow in fighting Islamic State and other terror groups.
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Dozens of trucks with United Nations relief supplies remain stuck on the Turkish border even as the truce, which started on Monday, appears to be largely holding.
