Russian strike hits Syrian base of U.S.-trained rebels: monitor

“Dozens of combatants were killed on both sides” as IS drove out rebels from nearby localities as well as a military base, said Rami Abdel Rahman of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. “Russia launched the attacks to protect Assad”, says Abdul Latif, a 34-year-old father of three from Talbiseh, who works at an auto shop in town and volunteers in his spare time distributing food to the needy.

US and North Atlantic Treaty Organisation leaders condemned the attacks as an effort to prop up the Syrian government of Bashar Assad, rather than to target Islamic State fighters.

Insurgent groups advanced against Assad’s forces earlier this year, putting pressure on his coastal heartland in the west of the country. Aleppo is Syria’s largest city and before the war was the country’s commercial capital.

“We will continue to build the case for military action in north-east Syria, where Isil is headquartered, where its command and control is, and from where its supply routes are being used to fuel its campaign in Iraq, a Russian intervention doesn’t change that”.

But the campaign appears to have mainly struck other rebel groups, a few of which – with Western and Gulf support – had been battling to stop the Islamic State advance across Aleppo province. The Russian defence ministry said it flew 67 sorties in the last 24 hours. Jamil al-Saleh, said the offensive is targeting areas almost totally controlled by rebel groups.

Russia’s use of cruise missiles has also fueled anxious about mishaps in the skies over Syria and the need for Moscow to agree to certain flight safety procedures proposed by the U.S.

That program was widely considered a failure, and on Friday, the Defense Department announced it was abandoning the goal of a U.S.-trained Syrian force, instead opting to equip established groups to fight IS.

The Government remains committed to building parliamentary support for RAF air strikes against Islamic State (IS) in Syria despite Russia’s intervention in the conflict, Defence Secretary Michael Fallon has said. France’s first strikes were carried out in late September. It fears Islamic State’s appeal in Chechnya and among its 20 million Muslim population, and so initially targeted Chechen groups in northern Syria. Le Drian said that Islamic State was France’s “main enemy” and that Russian strikes were mostly hitting Assad’s opponents in Syria and not IS targets.

The Russian air war has provided cover for Assad’s ground troops who have lost swathes of territory to jihadists and rebel groups since 2011.

An Iranian state television report said he was killed while “carrying out an advisory mission”, and the official IRNA news agency read a statement by the Guard in which it blamed IS for his death. Hamedani was a veteran of the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war and was made deputy chief commander of the elite forces in 2005.

Hamedani is one of the most senior Guard commanders to be killed in Syria, and the second to be killed this year. This week, Moscow fired cruise missiles into Syria from ships in the Caspian Sea, and the USA says four of them went awry and crashed in Iran. The exact circumstances of his death were not given. HRW said it is still investigating the two attacks.

In analysing the contradictory motives and positions of Syrian, regional and global powers must be taken into account. But the administration has said Assad must give up power for there to be any settlement to the conflict. “They’re both terrorists”, he says.