IS jihadists advance on Syria’s Aleppo: monitor

His comments came after the former chief of MI6, Sir John Sawers, warned that there was a “real danger” of clashes between Russian and coalition warplanes if they continued to mount rival operations in the skies over Syria.

Worldwide media report U.S. officials saying that that four Russian cruise missiles shot at Syrian targets from the Caspian Sea have landed in Iran.

Russian air forces carried out 67 sorties, striking 60 separate targets in northern Syria in the past 24 hours, the Defense Ministry has reported.

In Rome earlier in his trip, Carter described to a “tragically flawed” Russian strategy in Syria, where Russian military actions appear increasingly aimed at bolstering the Syrian regime of President Bashar al-Assad in his struggle against rebel forces and less at fighting ISIS.

North Atlantic Treaty Organisation talked tough Thursday about Moscow’s expanding military activity in Syria, but the U.S.-led alliance’s main response to the Russian airstrikes and cruise missile attacks was a public pledge to help reinforce the defenses of member nation Turkey if necessary.

“After the Russian air strikes, which reduced the fighting ability of Daesh [Isis] and other terrorist groups, the Arab Syrian armed forces kept the military initiative”, he said.

The Violations Documentation Center, a Syrian rights group, said at least 43 civilians, including nine children and seven women, were killed in the first day of Russia’s airstrikes in the central Homs province.

An Iranian official, Hamidreza Taraghi, who is close to the country’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, laughed at the report that missiles had crashed, calling it “complete nonsense”.

Dutch Defense Minister Jeanine Hennis-Plasschaert said that in Syria, “Russia is not constructive, not reliable and not cooperative – so it is of great concern”.

Syrian activists say the Islamic State group has launched a surprise attack in the northern province of Aleppo, seizing a string of villages from rebels.

But details about the exact funding levels and types of weapons, as well as which specific groups will receive them remain vague. Two senior Islamic State field commanders are reportedly among a few 300 militants killed in the strikes. But the White House argues that in deciding to bolster Assad, Russian Federation is lengthening the conflict because it is not distinguishing between the Islamic State and less radical opposition groups as it bombs those fighting the government.

“NATO is able and ready to defend all allies, including Turkey, against any threat”, Stoltenberg said.

Syria has been gripped by civil war since March 2011 with Takfiri terrorists now controlling parts of it, mostly in the east. Iran, an ally of both Assad and the current Shiite-led government in Iraq, has repeatedly said it has advisers in Syria, but not ground fighters. Since 2012, when a Turkish warplane was downed by a Syrian missile after it flew into Syrian airspace, Turkey has unilaterally declared a five-mile buffer zone, reserving the right to shoot down any target within that distance of the Turkish border that it regards as hostile. North Atlantic Treaty Organisation officials have been discussing whether to keep the batteries in Turkey, given Russia’s actions, but Stoltenberg played down that possibility.

France launched its first air strike in Syria on September 27, destroying an Islamic State training camp near Deir al-Zor in the east of the country. It said the group opened its blitz with a surprise attack on the Infantry Academy, forcing rebels to withdraw after a number of their fighters were killed or captured.