Obama warns Putin of Syria 'quagmire'
US President Barack Obama warned Russia that its bombing campaign against Syrian rebels will suck Moscow into a "quagmire," as Moscow pressed on with its bombing campaign in Syria.
On the ground, Russian air strikes destroyed an Islamic State command post near Raqa among other targets, the defence ministry said yesterday.
"Over the past 24 hours SU-34 and SU-24M jets of the Russian airborne formation in Syria made more than 20 sorties over nine Islamic State infrastructure facilities," the defence ministry said.
SU-34 fighters jet dropped a concrete busting BETAB-500 bomb on a command post in the area of ISIS stronghold Raqa, releasing video of the strike.
SU-24 bombers also destroyed a warehouse that stored ammunition in the mountains near the city of Jisr al-Shughur in Idlib province in northwestern Syria.
SU-34 fighter jets also targeted a training camp belonging to the Islamic State group near the town of Maaret al-Numan in Idlib province and destroyed ammunition and equipment, the ministry said.
Russian unmanned aerial vehicles continue to monitor the areas under control of the Islamic State group, the statement said.
Russia on Wednesday launched air strikes in Syria, its first major military engagement outside the former Soviet Union since the occupation of Afghanistan in 1979.
Washington has accused Russia of striking moderate rebels fighting against the embattled Syrian president under cover of a claimed assault on ISIS militants.
Obama on Friday warned that Moscow's aggressive military campaign in Syria was a "recipe for disaster."
At a White House news conference, Obama frequently assailed Russian President Vladimir Putin, who he accused of acting out of a position of weakness to defend a crumbling, authoritarian ally.
Friday prayers were canceled in insurgent-held areas of Syria's Homs province hit by Russian warplanes this week, with residents concerned that mosques could be targeted, according to one person from the area.
Putin's decision to launch strikes on Syria marks a dramatic escalation of foreign involvement in a more than four-year-old civil war in which every major country in the region has a stake.
It also gives fuel to domestic critics of Obama who say his unwillingness to act on Syria has allowed Moscow to stage its biggest show of force in the Middle East in decades.
But the US president warned that Russia and Iran, Assad's main backer in the Muslim world, have isolated the majority of Syrians and angered their Sunni Muslim neighbors.
"An attempt by Russia and Iran to prop up Assad and try to pacify the population is just going to get them stuck in a quagmire and it won't work," Obama said.
Russian President Vladimir Putin "doesn't distinguish between ISIL and a moderate Sunni opposition that wants to see Mr Assad go," Obama told reporters, referring to the self-proclaimed Islamic State group. "From their perspective, they're all terrorists. And that's a recipe for disaster, “he added.
The Syria campaign comes at a low point in Russia's relations with the West, a year after the United States and EU imposed financial sanctions on Moscow for annexing territory from Ukraine.
Western countries and Russia say they have a common enemy in Islamic State. But they also have very different allies and opposing views of how to resolve a war that has killed at least 250,000 people and driven more than 10 million from their homes.
Washington and its allies oppose both Islamic State and Assad, blaming him for attacks on civilians that have radicalized the opposition and insisting that he has no place in a post-war settlement. Russia and Iran see Assad as the capable force to fight extremism on the ground.
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