More than 60 Syrian soldiers were killed on Saturday evening by the airstrikes of the USA -led anti-terror coalition against Syrian military positions in the eastern province of Deir al-Zour, reports said.
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Russia accused the United States of violating their bilateral agreement which called for a cease-fire in Syria, saying the U.S. -led air strikes on Syrian military positions was a “bad omen” for the Russian-U.S. accord.
The death toll among Syrian government troops in air strikes by the US-led coalition the day before has risen to 90, a monitoring group reports.
The plane was reportedly downed in the Jebel Tharda area, close to the government’s Deir al-Zor military airport.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights added that the raid, which the U.S. said was unintentional, lasted 40 minutes, hitting several Syrian positions near an air base in the eastern province of Deir al-Zour.
The air strike that killed 62 Syrian soldiers outside the eastern city of Deir ez-Zor on Saturday was “inevitable given the stubborn refusal by the USA to cooperate with Russian Federation in combatting IS, Jabhat al-Nusra and other affiliated terrorist groups”, it states. IS had claimed that its fighters captured Tharda mountain, which overlooks the city’s government-controlled airport.
The Pentagon said that coalition pilots had believed they were hitting ISIS and had halted the raid as soon as Damascus ally Moscow informed commanders that army positions were coming under attack. ISIS-linked media also reported the incident.
The Syrian military said the coalition airstrike hit a base in Deir el-Zour that was surrounded by ISIS, allowing the extremists to advance and overrun Syrian army positions in the area.
However some violence has persisted across Syria and promised aid deliveries to besieged areas remain blocked with both sides accusing the other of bad faith. Tens of thousands of people live in government-held neighborhoods of Deir el-Zour under the siege of IS fighters.
IS controls much of the province that carries the same name and borders Iraq.
It said that Daesh had immediately gone on the offensive after the strikes and that a fierce battle between them and the regime army was now under way in the area, where it said local residents had previously been receiving humanitarian aid by parachute over an extended period.
US Defense Department spokesman Peter Cook said the pilots believed they were striking Daesh targets, and that Russian Federation had been notified earlier in the day at its plans to operate in the area but that “no concerns were voice”.
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The five-year-old civil war has killed hundreds of thousands and displaced half the country’s population, drawing in global and regional powers, causing an worldwide refugee crisis and inspiring jihadist attacks around the world.
