Russian Federation pounds Islamic State strongholds with vengeance

Russian long-range bombers and navy ships have launched 101 cruise missiles in four days, including 18 fired on Friday.

A few missiles hit IS in strategically important Deir al-Zour, reports say.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the raids were carried out either by Syrian or Russian war planes.

After the carnage in Paris which declared the lives of 130 people at the hands of ISIS, Putin and French Head of state Francois Hollande consented to ensure closer contact and control of their countries’ operations in Syria.

Over the past four days, Russian air forces have conducted 522 sorties, deploying more than 100 cruise missiles and 1,400 tons of bombs of various types, the minister stated. He expressed hope that the next phases would “produce the expected result”, but did not clarify what those phases would be.

The bomb is now waiting to be dispatched from Syria and follows the news that Isis were responsible for last week’s Paris attacks as well as the Russian plane crash in Egypt. “They might be losing a few ground here and there but to terrorise, of course, they are using different methods”, he told the BBC. The IS-affiliated Sinai Province group claimed responsibility for the attack in which 224 people died, saying it was revenge for Russia’s intervention in Syria.

The coalition began strikes in Syria past year, and Russian Federation launched its own aerial campaign there on September 30.

Meanwhile, Turkey has warned Russian Federation that it must immediately stop bombing “civilian Turkmen villages” in Syria, close to the Turkish border.

Russian Foreign Ministry official Ilya Rogachev earlier on Friday criticised France’s justification for the attacks, that they were self-defence according to Article 51 of the United Nations Charter.

The US-led coalition fighting IS said Monday it had destroyed 116 fuel trucks used by the jihadists in eastern Syria, in one of the largest raids in weeks.