Islamic Sate fighters seize villages close to Aleppo

Russia’s defence ministry also denied the reports.

Two officials said it’s unclear whether the errant missiles caused any significant damage in Iran.

Several of the long-range cruise missiles that Russian Federation fired at Syrian targets landed instead in Iran, Pentagon officials said Thursday.

“Any professional knows that during these operations we always fix the target before and after impact”.

Russian Federation began launching the missiles on Wednesday, a week after the start of an airstrike campaign aimed at helping Syrian President Bashar Assad, who is entrenched in a five-year-old civil war with anti-government rebels that has fueled the rise of ISIS. It comes amid a wave of Russian airstrikes and a ground offensive by the Syrian army in the country’s central region.

The defence ministry had said earlier that 27 “terrorist” targets have been hit on Thursday.

The missiles fired from Caspian sea to Syria crossed Iranian and Iraqi airspace.

The Islamic State group has strongholds in Raqqa and Aleppo, while Syria’s Al Qaeda affiliate, the Nusra Front, has a strong presence in Idlib.

“Iranian Twitter and Facebook users did not immediately note any explosions in the area between the Caspian Sea and the Iraqi border”.

The UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said it was the biggest advance by Islamic State since it launched an offensive against rebels in the northern Aleppo countryside near the Turkish border in late August.

“After the Russian air strikes…, the Syrian army took the initiative and formed a force equipped with guns and munitions, most importantly the Intrusion Squad”, he said.

The ISIL advance threatens both regime and rebel forces in the city, including a strategic road that leads from rebel-held Aleppo to the Turkish border.

“Foreign military intervention in Syria – whether by Russian Federation or the West – will neither help resolve the conflict there nor eradicate terrorist organizations”, Ahmed bin Heli, deputy secretary-general of the Arab League, told reporters.

Washington says a central part of its strategy is building “moderate” insurgents to fight against Mr Assad and Islamic State, although so far it has struggled to find many fighters to accept its training.