Russia launched co-ordinated missile strikes against rebels in Syria yesterday and Moscow for the first time used its only aircraft carrier in combat, Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu said.
Shoigu said a frigate had fired cruise missiles, jets from the Admiral Kuznetsov, Russia’s sole aircraft carrier, had been involved in action, and missiles had been loosed from a mobile land-based missile system inside Syria.
In Washington, Captain Jeff Davis, a Pentagon spokesman, said he was aware of the announcement, but was still looking into the strikes.
“From a pure military perspective, Russia already has significant capabilities inside Syria,” Davis said. “Anything that they bring in from the outside, if it’s aircraft carriers or if it’s cruise missiles launching from ships or if it’s long-range strike bombers flying in from Russia, those are done for show,” Davis added.
Reporting to President Vladimir Putin in southern Russia, Shoigu said Russia had targeted sites associated with Islamic State and the Nusra Front, which has changed its name to Fateh al-Sham, in the Homs and Idlib provinces.
“We carried out exhaustive advance research on all targets,” said Shoigu. “We are talking about warehouses with ammunition, terrorist training centres and factories.”
Shoigu said the strikes would continue.
He made no mention of Aleppo, where a civil defence official and a resident said air strikes had struck several districts in the rebel-held east of the city for the first time in weeks.
Syrian state television said Syria’s air force carried out strikes on Aleppo yesterday.
Russia says its air force is for now honouring a unilateral moratorium on hitting rebel targets inside Aleppo.
The assault on Aleppo was the first of its kind since Donald Trump won the US presidential election last week.
In Aleppo, Syrian government aircraft pounded the eastern neighbourhoods with air strikes and barrel bomb attacks, a monitor said.
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said at least five civilians were killed in the bombardment, the first of its kind since October 18.
A correspondent in east Aleppo said strikes hit the Sakhur, Fardos and Masakan Hanano neighbourhoods while ambulances sped through the streets to evacuate the wounded.
Warplanes dropped flares to counter heat-seeking missiles, he said.
The bombardment ended a period of relative respite for more than 250,000 people living in besieged eastern Aleppo.
On October 18, Moscow said it was halting its air strikes ahead of a short-lived truce and Syrian strikes on the rebel east also subsided, with bombardment mostly confined to areas where clashes were taking place on the edges of the city.
The respite came after international criticism of a ferocious assault launched by Syrian and Russian forces on September 22 in a bid to recapture eastern Aleppo city.
Civilians were among hundreds of people killed in the bombing campaign, which also destroyed infrastructure.
Moscow has organised several brief truces to encourage residents and surrendering rebels to leave east Aleppo, but few have gone.
No aid has entered eastern Aleppo since it was first surrounded by government troops in mid-July, and the UN warned it was distributing its last remaining food rations in the rebel districts.
On Sunday, east Aleppo residents received text messages from the army warning rebels to leave within 24 hours.
“After the end of this period, the planned strategic offensive will begin,” the message said.
Once Syria’s economic powerhouse, Aleppo has been ravaged by the war that has killed more than 300,000 people across the country since it started in March 2011 with anti-government protests.
Yasser Yusef, a member of the political office of the Nureddine al-Zinki rebel group, expressed fears that the bombardment would lead to “massacres and crimes against humanity in northern Syria and particularly in Aleppo city and Idlib.”
“Russia and the regime are trying to foil the efforts of the United Nations and the international community to reduce violence and protect civilians and deliver aid to civilians in all the besieged areas,” he said.




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