7 Oct 2015

Russia claims strikes on Isis from warships

Russia says it has launched rocket strikes on Islamic State targets in Syria from its warships 930 miles away in the Caspian Sea.

Military training on board a Russian warship in Murmansk earlier this year

Four warships fired 26 sea-based cruise missiles on 11 Syrian targets destroying them, Russian Defence minister Sergei Shoigu said. It comes amid claims that most of the targets that Russia has been striking in Syria are non-IS targets.

Mr Shoigu told President Vladimir Putin about strikes launched from the warships during a televised meeting. However, Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said only two of 57 Russian air strikes in Syria so far had hit Islamic State, while the rest had been against the moderate opposition, the only forces fighting the hardline insurgents in north western Syria.

Turkey has summoned the Russian ambassador three times in four days to express concerns over what it said were repeated violations of it’s airspace by Russian warplanes.

“If (the Syrian regime) weakens the opposition, it will strengthen Islamic State,” he said, warning of the risk of a new flow of refugees, who have left Syria in their millions, overwhelming neighbouring countries and causing a crisis in the European Union.

Meanwhile Russia and Syria carried out what appeared to be the first major coordinated assaults on Syrian insurgents on Wednesday, targeting rebels in the west rather than Islamic State militants, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a British-based group which tracks the conflict via a network of sources within the country.