Obama says Russia has been weakened by Syrian conflict

The Russian Defense Ministry released images showing that its jets hit an Islamic State-held area near its de facto capital of Raqqa in northern Syria on Thursday.

Russia, he predicted, would get stuck in a “quagmire”, adding, “It just won’t work, and they’re going to stay there for a while”.

The United States and its allies immediately slammed Moscow’s intervention, accusing the Kremlin of seeking to buttress Assad under cover of a claimed assault on IS militants. French president Francois Hollande, insisted that the “strikes, regardless of who is carrying them out, target Daesh and not other groups”. “These organizations are well-known and the targets are chosen in coordination with the armed forces of Syria”, spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters Thursday.

Meanwhile, the United Nations said it had been forced to suspend planned humanitarian operations in parts of Syria due to the fighting.

The statement from the Syrian presidency came after the Russian Air Force waged violent airstrikes in the countryside surrounding Homs and Hama.

On the ground, at least 12 members of the Islamic State group have been killed in Russia’s first air strikes on the jihadist faction’s main Syrian bastion, a monitoring group said.

David Cameron said on Saturday Russian forces were “making the situation worse” as they pressed a bombing campaign in the I.S stronghold for a fourth day.

Putin’s decision to launch strikes in Syria marks a dramatic escalation of foreign involvement in a civil war more than four years old, where every major country in the region has a stake.

Since 2014, a US-led coalition has been bombing ISIL terrorist positions in Syria without the approval of the UN Security Council or Syrian authorities.

Mr Putin’s forces carried out 20 air strikes on Friday, hitting nine Isis targets including a command post and weapons bunker, Russia’s defence ministry said. “They haven’t gone to Russian Federation”.

More than 240,000 people have been killed, with four million more forced to flee the country. The Syrian opposition, and other rebel factions have suffered to the attacks.

According to the American leader, Vladimir Putin doesn’t distinguish between the “Islamic State” militants and the Syrian opposition.

Russia’s final remaining military base outside the former Soviet Union in positioned on Syria’s coast, lending further urgency to Putin’s desire to bolster Assad.

“The United States has been pretending to bombard Islamists for a year, but with no results”. The Al-Nusra-headed group fiercely opposes both IS and Assad’s regime.