Russian forces have launched air strikes against anti-government fighters in Syria to counter a major offensive on Aleppo, Russia’s military announced Friday as jihadists and Turkish-backed forces approached Syria’s second-largest city.
“The Russian Air Force is carrying out rocket-bomb attacks on the equipment and manpower of illegal armed groups, control points, warehouses and artillery positions of terrorists,” a spokesperson for the Defense Ministry’s Reconciliation Center for Syria told state news agencies.
The military claims to have “destroyed” 200 militants in the past 24 hours, though AFP could not independently verify this figure. “The operation to repel the aggression of the extremists continues,” said Oleg Ignasyuk, deputy head of the Russian reconciliation center.
The fighting marks some of the deadliest clashes in years in Syria’s civil war. Moscow, which intervened militarily in 2015 to support President Bashar al-Assad, serves as his government’s primary military backer and helped turn the tide of the conflict in his favor.
