‘Intense’ New Russian Strikes in Syria

The Islamic State group is not present in the areas where the fighting is underway.

The Observatory also reported several Russian strikes in the northwest of Aleppo province, including one on Wednesday morning that it said killed two women and a child.

The direction from which the attack occurred also was something of a surprise.

USA and Russian officials met once by video conference late last week, before Russian incursion into the airspace of Turkey over the weekend. Iraq previously has permitted Iranian planes to overfly its territory to ferry supplies to the Assad government.

On Wednesday, Moscow upped the ante dramatically with the launch of an unprecedented series of cruise missile attacks to cover a Syrian army ground offensive against rebels seeking the ouster of long-term Russian ally President Bashar al-Assad.

A Syrian rebel commander said the offensive included airstrikes, helicopter-borne paratroopers, tanks and artillery, targeting three downs in Idlib province near Syria’s border with Turkey and a fourth village in Hama province.

This “spearhead” force, of about 13,000 troops, could be deployed both to the east and to the south if need be, he said.

There was no confirmation of the casualty figures.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said a government offensive began on four fronts in the north-western provinces of Idlib and neighbouring Hama.

Pentagon officials revealed they recently had to carry out at least one “safe separation” manoeuvre to avoid a USA jet coming too close to a Russian aircraft over Syria. “Conflict, instability and insecurity”, he said.

The US-led coalition has been routinely conducting airstrikes on Islamic State jihadists in Syria. In another incident, Turkish military officials said that eight F-16 fighters were harassed by unidentified MIG-29 aircraft during a patrol flight on the border with Syria this week.

“According to the military information we received, Russian Federation has carried out 57 air operations: 55 against [the] moderate opposition and just two against Daesh”.

It was unclear how much damage the Russian cruise missiles had caused. It was not immediately clear if the pilots were Russian or Syrian.

The launches marked the combat debut of the Russian Kalibr long-range cruise missiles, equivalent to U.S. Tomahawk missiles. Shoigu insisted the operation destroyed all the targets and did not launch any strikes on civilian areas.

Russian Federation said on Wednesday that it could implement U.S. proposals to coordinate its strikes with the Washington-led coalition in a bid to minimise risks.

North Atlantic Treaty Organisation Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said on Tuesday that Russian Federation had not provided any real explanation for its violations of Turkish airspace, which “lasted for a long time” and “did not look like an accident”.

After a summer of significant setbacks at the hands of Islamic State militants and other anti-government fighters, Syrian forces are expected to use Russia’s new support to push out from government-controlled areas in the western third of the country.

Earlier, Turkey’s Foreign Ministry said Turkey had proposed a meeting between Turkish and Russian military officials to be held in Ankara on avoiding future Russian infringements of Turkey’s airspace.