Russia launches fresh airstrikes in Syria

Russian warplanes unleashed a new wave of strikes against opponents of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad yesterday, as Moscow and Washington prepared for urgent talks to avoid clashes between their forces.

It was the second straight day of Russian raids in Syria, where Moscow on Wednesday launched its first military engagement outside the former Soviet Union since the occupation of Afghanistan in 1979.

An opposition Turkmen group said yesterday Russia's first airstrikes in Syria, which Moscow said were aimed at Islamic State fighters, instead hit Free Syrian Army sites and killed over 40 civilians, reports Reuters.

Areas where ethnic Turkmens live in Homs and Hama came under attack on Wednesday, the Turkey-based Syrian Turkmen Assembly said in a statement. In the village of Telbiseh near Homs alone, 40 civilians, including Turkmens, were killed, it said.

Russia, a key backer of Assad, said the latest strikes yesterday had hit four targets linked to the Islamic State jihadist group, which controls large parts of Syria and neighbouring Iraq.

But a Syrian security source said they had targeted a powerful coalition of Islamist rebels which includes al-Qaeda's Syria affiliate and which is fiercely opposed to IS.

A member of the Army of Conquest, which controls Idlib province and has advanced west towards Assad's coastal heartland of Latakia, said on Twitter that "Russian pigs" had flattened a mosque in Jisr al-Shughur.

Meanwhile, the Kremlin said Russian air strikes in Syria are targeting a list of well-known militant organisations, not only Islamic State.

The air force "destroyed the headquarters of terrorist groups and a weapons warehouse in Idlib area and a three-story fortified command centre in Hama region," the defence ministry said.

"As a result of a direct bomb hit, a factory equipping cars with explosives north of the city of Homs was completely destroyed," it said in a statement.

President Vladimir Putin dismissed claims that Russian air strikes had killed civilians in Syria as "information warfare" but said Moscow would look into those reports, reports AFP.

US Senator John McCain said yesterday Russian warplanes conducted air strikes on groups "funded and trained by our CIA," a claim which if true could mark an escalation in tensions between Moscow and Washington.

"Their initial strikes were against the individuals and the groups that have been funded and trained by our CIA," McCain told CNN, adding that the move showed Moscow's real priority: "to prop up" Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

Iran yesterday threw its support behind Russia's air strikes in defence of their common ally, Bashar al-Assad, describing it as a step to solving "the crisis" in the region.

Iran's foreign ministry said it supported the move that was "based on an official request from the Syrian government to the Russian Federation".

Russian news agencies quoted defence ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov as saying Moscow had sent some 50 planes and helicopters to Syria, as well as marines.

"For the first time marines of the Black Sea fleet will be used to guard Russian military infrastructure in Syria, including the... Tartus (naval facility) and a temporary airbase of the Russian airforce in Latakia," he said.

Troops will be rotated and will include special forces from Russia's warships in the Mediterranean as well as the 7th division of the country's airborne troops from the southern city Novorossiysk, Konashenkov added.