Russia says air force has not hit civilian targets in Syria

“The Russian Air Forces haven’t launched a single strike against civilian targets in Syria”, Russian Aerospace Forces Commander Col. Gen. Viktor Bondarev told media.

A senior Russian officer said Russian pilots were so well-trained they “never missed their targets”.

Russian Federation has hit back at a human rights report accusing it of committing war crimes in Syria, dubbing it “politically-motivated and fabricated”.

Russia’s Defense Ministry strongly rejected the allegations and described similar reports as attempts to discredit its operations in Syria.

The Amnesty International has recently reported that there has been a surge of cluster munitions that bombed areas targeted by Russian forces over at Syria, which by nature these cluster munitions are indiscriminate and frequently enough leaves unexploded bomblets on the targeted area that may still kill or injure civilians long after the conflict has ceased, as reported by ABC News.

“Such attacks may amount to war crimes”, they added.

The Kremlin began its campaign of air strikes in Syria on September 30, saying it wanted to help Moscow’s main Middle East ally, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, defeat Islamic State and other militant groups.

In October UK defence secretary Michael Fallon said Ministry of Defence intelligence suggested only one in 20 Russian airstrikes were on targets to damage so-called Islamic State.

However, Russia has insisted its campaign does focus on the terrorist organisation.

The audio message has not been independently verified but was posted on IS-affiliated websites and Twitter in the same way as previous IS messages.

The United Nations now aims to bring together Syria’s warring parties on January 25 in Geneva to begin talks to try to end almost five years of civil war.