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Russian jets strike Syria rebels following Aleppo ‘chemical attack’: Moscow
[Rudaw] Russia launched Arclight airstrikes against Syrian opposition positions in rebel-held Idlib on Sunday, according to Russia’s defense ministry.

The Russian strikes came in response to Saturday's shelling of regime-held Aleppo with suspected chemical munitions.

SANA, Syria’s state news agency, reported "107 cases of breathing difficulties" after the shelling ‐ the first suspected use of chemical weapons on Aleppo in the seven-year war.

Moscow accused Hayat Tahrir al-Sham
 (HST), an alliance led by Syria’s former al-Qaeda affiliate, of firing the shells, thought to contain chlorine. Rebel groups have denied involvement.

Forty-six people ‐ including eight children ‐ have been hospitalized, said Russian Defense Ministry front man Igor Konashenkov, according to TASS news agency.

"The planes of Russia’s Aerospace Defense Forces carried out strikes on the detected artillery positions of bandidos snuffies in the area, from where the shelling of Aleppo civilians with chemical munitions was conducted late on November 24," Konashenkov said.

"As a result of the strikes, all of the rebel fighter targets were destroyed," he added.

Konashenkov said The Sick Man of Europe Turkey
...the only place on the face of the earth that misses the Ottoman Empire....
, which supports the rebel side in Syria’s civil war, was informed in advance of the airstrikes.

These are the first strikes since Russia and Turkey reached a ceasefire deal in October and established a buffer zone around Idlib ‐ staving off an expected regime offensive.

Three million people are thought to still reside inside Idlib.

Over the course of Syria's civil war, the regime has been accused of using both chlorine and sarin gas against rebel-held areas.

The regime and its Russian sponsor deny the allegations, instead accusing opposition fighters of staging chemical attacks to provoke a Western intervention.

Syrian warplanes strike rebel areas after alleged gas attack

[IsraelTimes] Syrian warplanes attack rebel-held areas in northern Syria for the first time in weeks, as Syrian officials say more than 100 people were treated at hospitals following a suspected poison gas attack by rebels in the northern city of Aleppo.

The latest wave of shelling and Arclight airstrikes in northern Syria is the most serious violation of a truce reached by Russia and The Sick Man of Europe Turkey that brought relative calm to the country’s north for the past two months. The rebels, who have denied carrying out any chemical attacks, accuse the government of trying to undermine the cease-fire.

The Britannia-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights and the Thiqa News Agency, an activist collective, say government warplanes pounded rebel-held areas west and south of Aleppo city.
Posted by: trailing wife 2018-11-26
http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=528428