Russian Syria strikes kill 18,000 – DAESH cell found in Raqqa

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BEIRUT, Sept 30, (Agencies): More than 18,000 people, nearly half of them civilians, have been killed in Russian air strikes on Syria since Moscow began its game-changing intervention exactly three years ago, a monitor said Sunday.

Russia, for its part, said its “accurate” strikes had killed 85,000 “terrorists”. A steadfast ally of Syria’s ruling regime, Russia began carrying out bombing raids in the country on Sept 30, 2015 – more than four years into the devastating confl ict. Since then, they have killed 18,096 people, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

“That number includes 7,988 civilians, or nearly half of the total,” said Observatory chief Rami Abdel Rahman. Another 5,233 Islamic State fighters were also killed in Russian strikes, with the rest of the dead including other rebels, Islamists and jihadists, the Britain-based monitor said. Russia’s defence commission published drastically different figures on Sunday.

“All of the air strikes have targeted and are still accurately targeting terrorist targets,” said Commission Chief Viktor Bondarev, cited by the Russian Interfax agency. Human rights groups and Western governments have criticised Russia’s air war in Syria, saying it bombs indiscriminately and targets civilian infrastructure including hospitals.

The White Helmets, a Syrian rescue force that works in opposition areas, said in a report released Sunday that it had responded to dozens of strikes by Russia on buildings used by civilians since 2015. They included Russian bombing raids on 19 schools, 12 public markets and 20 medical facilities over the past three years, as well as 21 of its own rescue centres.

“Russia has flaunted its disregard for agreements over safe zones, no-conflict zones, cessations of hostilities, and de-escalation zones by continuing with airstrikes on civilian spaces,” the White Helmets charged. Russia has operated a naval base in Syria’s coastal Tartus province for decades, but expanded its operations to the nearby Hmeimim airbase in 2015

. It also has special forces and military police units on the ground in government-controlled parts of the country. The air strikes were crucial in helping troops loyal to President Bashar al-Assad retake swathes of the country, including second city Aleppo in 2016 and areas around Damascus, the rural centre, and the south this year alone

“The regime controlled just 26 percent of Syrian territory” when Russia intervened, said Abdel Rahman, compared with close to two-thirds now.

In addition to the Russian and Syrian air forces, warplanes from the US-led coalition fighting IS have also been carrying out bombing raids on Syria since September 2014. Last week, the Observatory said that US-led coalition air strikes on Syria had killed more than 3,300 civilians since the alliance began operations against IS targets.

The Observatory, which relies on sources inside Syria for its reports, says it determines whose planes carried out strikes according to type, location, flight patterns and munitions involved.

Islamic State cell
Security forces in northern Syria’s Raqqa city said on Sunday they had uncovered an Islamic State sleeper cell which was plotting series of large attacks across the devastated city.

Raqqa served as the de facto capital of Islamic State’s self-proclaimed caliphate until it was retaken by the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) militia alliance last October.

A spokesman for the Raqqa Internal Security Forces set up by the SDF said it had killed two members of an Islamic State cell and detained five others during an operation on Saturday. “Special forces and explosives experts carried out a counter operation.. to confront plans which were about to be executed by a terrorist cell affiliated with mercenaries of DAESH in a neighborhood in Raqqa city,” the unit’s spokesman Mohannad Ibrahim said at a news conference.

DAESH is an Arabic acronym for Islamic State. The forces raided two residential apartments where the cell members were hiding and confiscated grenades, pistols and explosives, the spokesman said. They also found a car bomb at the site of the operation and unearthed a large cache of arms and land mines buried nearby. The city has witnessed lately a wave of road side bombings targeting mainly SDF officials and fighters.

In June, SDF imposed a three-day curfew in Raqqa and declared a state of emergency saying Islamic State militants had infiltrated the city and planned a bombing campaign. Syrian rebels denied on Sunday they had pulled any heavy arms from a major opposition bastion in the north, as the deadline to implement a demilitarisation deal there draws closer. Regime ally Moscow and rebel backer Ankara agreed earlier this month to create a buffer zone around the opposition stronghold of Idlib that would be free of both jihadists and heavy arms.

The deal has so far averted a massive assault on the region by Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s government, but its implementation in areas packed with rival jihadists and rebels is expected to be complex.

The National Liberation Front, a pro-Turkey rebel alliance, welcomed the agreement but said Sunday it had not yet moved any heavy arms from the planned zone. “There have been no withdrawals of heavy weapons from any area or any front. This report is denied, completely denied,” NLF spokesman Naji Mustafa told AFP.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitor had earlier said one faction of the NLF began withdrawing its heavy weapons under the Turkish-Russian agreement. It said Faylaq al-Rahman, whose fighters number between 8,500 and 10,000, were leaving three towns in the planned buffer zone on Sunday “with heavy weapons, including tanks and cannons”.

The Britain-based monitor uses a vast network of sources including fighters, officials and medical staff. A spokesman for Faylaq al-Rahman also told AFP on Sunday it had not moved any forces or arms. “There have been no changes in the location of weapons or redistribution of fighters, even as we remain committed to the agreement reached in (the Russian resort of) Sochi,” said Sayf al-Raad. “We are still coordinating with the Turkish guarantor on following the agreement and ways to implement it,” he added. On Sept 17, Russian President Vladimir Putin and Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan agreed to set up a demilitarised zone about 15 to 20 kms wide ringing around Idlib.

All factions in the planned buffer must hand over their heavy weapons by Oct 10, and radical groups must withdraw by Oct 15, according to the agreement. The deal was welcomed by world powers, aid organisations, and the United Nations, which all hoped it would help avoid a bloody military assault on the area. But observers have pointed out its implementation would be tricky for Ankara.

Most of the territory where the zone would be established is controlled by either hardline jihadists or by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, which is led by former members of al-Qaeda’s Syria branch and widely considered the most powerful force in Idlib. The rest is held by the NLF and other rebels.

HTS has yet to announce its position on the agreement, and there have been no signs it was moving out either fighters or heavy weapons. But al-Qaeda loyalists Hurras al- Deen, which have a presence in the zone, rejected the deal last week. And on Saturday, formerly USbacked rebel group Jaish al-Izza followed suit. “We are against this deal, which eats into liberated (rebel-held) areas and bails out Bashar al-Assad,” its head Jamil al-Saleh told AFP.

Jaish al-Izza, which is not part of the NLF, clashed with regime forces throughout the night on Saturday and into Sunday in the province of Hama, bordering Idlib. Separate clashes were also taking place in the coastal province of Latakia between jihadists and government fighters, the Observatory said on Sunday. Idlib and adjacent rebel territory are home to some three million people, about half of them displaced from other parts of Syria. Seven years of brutal war have forced more than half of Syria’s people out of their homes, sending more than five million into neighbouring countries to seek refuge and leaving another six million internally displaced.

After losing swathes of territory to rebel fighters, Assad appears to have regained the upper hand and now controls around two-thirds of the country. The areas still outside his control are Idlib in the northwest, and a northeastern chunk held by Kurdish authorities where US and other Western troops are present. On Saturday, Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Muallem said Damascus would keep “fighting this sacred battle until we purge all Syrian territories” of both radical groups and “any illegal foreign presence”.

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