Russian Federation calls shelling of its embassy in Syria terrorist attack

The head of Syria’s Nusra Front, an offshoot of al Qaeda, urged insurgents on Monday to escalate attacks on the strongholds of President Bashar al Assad’s minority Alawite sect, in retaliation for what he said was the indiscriminate killing of Muslim Sunnis by invading Russians.

The first mortar hit the rooftop of the embassy while the second landed in the embassy’s yard, said the source on condition of anonymity, adding that there was no information on possible casualties yet.

The foreign-sponsored conflict in Syria, which flared in March 2011, has claimed the lives of more than 250,000 people so far and left over one million injured, according to the United Nations.

Echoing that hope to go back on the offensive, an alliance of insurgents that has been targeted by Russian air strikes said on Tuesday it was starting an operation to recapture Hama.

There was widespread panic, but it was not immediately clear if anyone had been wounded or killed.

The attack comes after after al-Qaida’s branch in Syria, Nusra Front, called for retaliation against the Russian airstrikes and the Syrian government.

A US-led air coalition fighting IS in Syria has also targeted Al-Nusra on several occasions.

Russia began its own military campaign against terrorists in Syria on September 30 upon a request from the Damascus government, shortly after the upper house of the Russian parliament gave President Vladimir Putin the mandate to use military force in Syria.

The U.K.-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group said the rockets were fired from the eastern edges of the capital, where rebels maintain a few ground.

Elsewhere, fierce overnight fighting in the key village of Kafr Nabuda in the central province of Hama forced pro-regime forces to retreat and killed 25 of them.