Russian Federation Denies US Claim That 4 Syria-Bound Missiles Crashed in Iran

“They’ve been largely against opposition groups that want a better future for Syria and don’t want to see the [Bashar] Assad regime stay in power”, State Department spokesman John Kirby said during a press briefing.

Syrian troops and allied militia backed by the Russian air strikes attacked rebels in the Ghab Plain in western Syria on Thursday, and the army chief said a major offensive was underway to recapture territory from insurgents. It made no mention of any missiles going astray.

“Since Russian Federation began its operations in Syria, Western media and officials have launched an all-out assault against Moscow”, the Fars News Agency, thought to have close affiliations with Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, said.

US Defense Secretary Ashton Carter on Thursday deplored the fact that Russian warships fired the cruise missiles “without warning”.

The BBC’s Barbara Plett Usher in Washington says the Americans are rattled by the addition of cruise missiles to the air war over Syria, where the USA and its allies are also operating.

Russian President Vladimir Putin last week told the UN General Assembly that Russia would intervene in Syria to punish the so-called Islamic State, which has flourished in the chaos of a civil war that has raged since 2011 and forced millions of Syrians to flee their home.

Jens Stoltenberg spoke of “a troubling escalation in Russia’s military activities in Syria”.

The main targets of Russia’s air and cruise-missile strikes are not the Islamic State terrorist group, but members of more moderate forces opposed to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, Stoltenberg said.

Tom reports that the missiles landed in a rural area of Iran.

“We don’t have to deploy the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation Response Force or the spearhead force to deliver deterrence”, Stoltenberg said.

At least four of those missiles did not make it to Syria but crashed in Iran as they flew through that country’s airspace en route to Syria, USA officials said.

“We get this information from sources in a number of other countries, coordinating it with our partners within the Baghdad Information Center”, said Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov.

Russian officials are accusing Islamic State fighters of hiding among the civilian population, and they say Russian warplanes have canceled attacks whenever there was a possibility of hurting non-combatants.

Russian Federation is embarking on in its first military campaign outside the former Soviet Union in three decades to support Assad, who is also backed by Shiite-dominated Iran in the fight against predominantly Sunni groups.