Syrian troops, Russian jets launch attack in Ghab Plain

Medical facilities throughout the country are now trying to avoid danger by moving operations to first floors or basements, which are safer during barrel bomb attacks and other strikes launched by the Syrian government, said Widney Brown, PHR’s director of programs.

USA officials have already disputed Russian reports that the missiles stuck Islamic State fighters in Syria.

Ayoub did not specify the areas being targeted.

“We are facing many challenges from many different directions”, Stoltenberg said.

Russian warplanes conducted heavy airstrikes Wednesday on Islamist factions, accompanied by shelling from government forces, according to the UK-based, anti-Assad Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

Russian fighter jets have been targeting rebel groups in Syria with air strikes since last week, and yesterday began a Russian-backed air-ground offensive against opposition forces fighting the regime between Hama and Idlib.

“That is very regrettable, in particular the mounting toll of civilian casualties through what looks like the use of unguided as well as guided munitions being deployed quite indiscriminately in civilian areas”, he said.

Iranian state television is reporting that a senior commander in Iran’s powerful Revolutionary Guard has been killed in Syria.

The alliance has sought to expand into Hama from Idlib and seize high ground to target the neighboring regime stronghold of Latakia province. The rebels repulsed government troops, al-Ahmad said.

“Russia doesn’t want to control the entire world and impose its ideology on others”.

They briefly entered one town, but were forced to pull back, he said, and around 15 of their tanks or armored vehicles had been either destroyed or disabled.

Anton Gerashchenko, an adviser to Ukraine’s Interior Minister Arsen Avakov, is under investigation for “public calls for committing acts of terrorism or the public justification of terrorism”, the Russian agency’s spokesman Vladimir Markin said in a statement Wednesday. It was unclear if it was Syrian or Russian. Assad’s air force has Russian-made helicopters.

“Otherwise one would have to acknowledge that IS facilities – located at a considerable distance from each other – exploded all by themselves,” Konashenkov said.

Putin, who turned 63 on Wednesday, said Russian warships had fired cruise missiles on Islamic State group positions in Syria for the first time.

“Losing Turkey would be a serious loss for Russian Federation”, Erdogan said, in comments published Thursday in the Hurriyet newspaper.

Russian Federation said its warplanes flew 22 sorties and carried out 11 airstrikes on IS training facilities in Hama and Raqqa provinces. We told them we can take care of Daesh.

As US State Department spokesman John Kirby stated on October 7, “Greater than 90% of the strikes that we’ve seen them take to date have not been against ISIL or al-Qaeda-affiliated terrorists”, according to AFP.

Pentagon press secretary Peter Cook said the new approach is aimed at improving USA support for partners on the ground in Syria.

The USA announcement marked the effective end to a short-lived multimillion-dollar program to train and equip units of fighters at sites outside of Syria, after that program’s disastrous launch this year fanned criticism of president Barack Obama’s war strategy. Both reports did not provide further details.