Russia, United States agree on Syria; Iraqis won’t seek Russian strikes

The Russian Foreign Ministry says over the previous 24 hours it conducted 55 combat sorties against 60 targets in the Hama, Idlib, Damascus, Aleppo, Deir ez-Zor and Latakia provinces.

Syria’s conflict, which began in March 2011, has killed more than 250,000 people, wounded a million and displaced half the country’s population.

Recently, USA and Russian aircraft have flown in close proximity over Syria, and there have been concerns about the safety of pilots given the risk of miscalculation in the tight airspace.

The figures in Tuesday’s report did not include an overnight Russian airstrikes in Syria’s Latakia province that killed a high-ranking commander of a Syrian rebel group that had received American-made weapons.

Syria’s coastal plain and the mountain range are a stronghold of President Bashar al-Assad’s Alawite sect, and are mostly under government control.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said at least 370 people had been killed, including more than 120 civilians.

At a Pentagon news conference, Cook gave a broad description of the document but said the USA had accepted a Russian request that the text be kept secret. “They need dozens”, said one official, declining to be named due to the political sensitivity of the military support program.

Russian President Vladimir Putin said the air war demonstrated Moscow could counter any “terrorist” threats.

Russian Federation says it has hit a few 500 “terrorist” targets since launching its campaign.

But rebels and their backers accuse Moscow of seeking to prop up Assad, a longtime ally, and accuse Russian Federation of striking moderate and Islamist opposition forces rather than just jihadists.

Syrian activist Maamun al-Khatieb said thousands had fled fierce Russian bombardment and “the fear that Iranian militias would storm their villages”.

Aleppo, once Syria’s commercial hub, has been a key focus of the fighting. The city has been ravaged by war and divided between government forces in the west and rebels in the east since shortly after fighting there began in mid-2012.

Aleppo is about 50 kilometers (30 miles) from the border with Turkey.

He said a further 15 civilians had been killed in the air strike in Jabal Akrad, a rural, mountainous area in the province.

“They’ve spread throughout the outskirts of Homs… those who left took whatever they could carry”, he told AFP.

The airstrikes also killed 243 fighters from different insurgent groups, including the Islamic State group and al-Qaida’s affiliate in Syria, the Nusra Front. Seventy Canadian special forces troops will remain in northern Iraq to train Kurds.