United Kingdom: Russia’s strikes in Syria ‘killing civilians’ not Islamic State fighters

“These military actions constitute a further escalation and will only fuel more extremism and radicalization”, the statement said.

The Prime Minister has been expected to extend British air strikes from Iraq into Syria, where a few members of the US-led coalition are already active, for a few time.

Obama said Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s decision to support a no-fly zone in Syria, which the United States president opposes, was not “half-baked”.

Several military sources and the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a monitoring group, said on Friday Russian air strikes had hit areas controlled by groups other than IS. But USA officials acknowledged that this is one of the questions being asked as they debate the administration’s response to what White House press secretary Josh Earnest described as Russia’s “indiscriminate military operations against the Syrian opposition“.

The governments of the the United Kingdom, US, France, Germany, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Turkey condemned the Russian involvement, stating it was not targeting Isis, also known as Daesh or Isil.

The Russian airstrikes targeted positions of the so-called Jaish al-Fateh, or the Conquer Army, in Syria’s northwestern province of Idlib, the pan-Arab al-Mayadeen TV reported.

Hollande used a meeting on Ukraine to address Western concerns that Russia’s airstrikes would serve to strengthen Syrian President Bashar Assad by targeting rebels – perhaps including a few aligned with the USA – rather than hitting IS fighters it has promised to attack.

But it targeted the opposition that fights against the regime, not Daesh, and the civilians were killed in the process.

Russian Federation carried out more airstrikes in Syria Friday, as a U.S-led coalition urged Moscow to halt any attacks on the Syrian opposition and focus on Islamic State targets.

“Six strikes were conducted on targets of the ISIS terrorist group in 14 flights by Sukhoi Su-34, Sukhoi Su-24M and Sukhoi Su-25 jets”, the defence ministry said in a statement.

Russia’s intervention in Syria, the president added, is “not particularly different from what they’ve been doing in the past…They’re just more overt about it”.

“I would expect a huge influx of weapons into the north to try to blunt any ground assault by the regime”, the analyst said. The representatives of the coalition command have always been saying that their targets are ISIL, al-Nusra and other terrorist groups. Currently, that protection would apply only to about 80 US-trained Syrian rebels who are back in Syria fighting with their units.