Russian strikes in Syria kill more than 1,300: monitor

BEIRUT: More than 1,300 people, around two-thirds of them combatants, have been killed in Russian air strikes in Syria since Moscow’s aerial campaign began on September 30, a monitor said Friday.

The figure supplied by the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights is more that double the overall toll it gave in its last report on the Russian campaign three weeks ago.

The Britain-based Observatory said it had documented 1,331 deaths in Russian air strikes, most of them of Daesh group jihadists or other fighters.

It said 381 Daesh fighters had been killed, along with 547 militants from Al Qaida affiliate Al Nusra Front and other terrorist forces.

The strikes also killed 403 civilians, including 97 children, according to the monitor.

The Observatory’s last toll for the campaign, on October 29, put the number of killed at nearly 600.

Several medical groups have also accused Russia of strikes that have hit field clinics and hospitals in Syria.

Russia’s intervention in Syria follows that of a US-led coalition that has been carrying out strikes against Daesh in the country since September 2014.

According to the Observatory, the US-led strikes have killed at least 3,649 people since they began, around six per cent of them civilians.

Peace process

Meanwhile, the US was pushing to keep Syria’s peace process alive Thursday, saying President Bashar Al Assad’s future will be decided in the coming weeks, after the embattled leader rejected an ambitious timetable to cede power.

Top diplomats from 17 countries last week agreed a framework to create a transitional government, new constitution and hold elections under a plan to end the more than four-year conflict that has cost 250,000 lives.

Syrians are due to start political discussions in the new year, beginning a process Washington hopes will allow foreign players to focus their fire on the Daesh group that was behind last week’s bloody Paris attacks.

US State Department spokesman John Kirby said Assad’s role will be determined in the upcoming talks, but reiterated that the Syrian president must leave as a precondition for any credible peace process.

Hours earlier, US President Barack Obama said during a trip to Manila that he cannot “foresee a situation in which we can end the civil war in Syria while Assad remains in power”.

Underlining the international fallout from Syria’s conflict, France, still reeling from the attacks orchestrated by Daesh extremists on Friday that claimed 129 lives in the worst terror attack on its soil, asked the United Nations to ramp up the fight against the jihadists.

In a draft resolution presented to the 15-member UN Security Council, it called on UN member states to “redouble and coordinate their efforts to prevent and suppress terrorist acts” committed by the Daesh organisation and other extremist groups linked to Al Qaida.

The draft does not provide any legal basis for military action but France hopes it will rally support for the campaign against Daesh militants as it steps up its own attacks in Syria and Iraq.

“The exceptional and unprecedented threat posed by this group to the entire international community requires a strong, united and unambiguous response from the Security Council,” French Ambassador to the UN Francois Delattre said.

A General Assembly committee also passed a Saudi Arabia-sponsored resolution condemning human rights violations in Syria and calling for war crimes perpetrators to face trial.

International efforts to end the Syrian crisis have gathered steam as Daesh militants have carried out increasingly ambitious attacks against foreign targets and thousands of people fleeing the country have started pouring into Europe.

— AFP