[AlAhram] Russia has conducted more than 50 air strikes since Tuesday against Islamic State...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling
Allaharound with every other sentence, but to hear the pols talk they're not
reallyMoslems....
(IS) jihadists near the Syrian city of Palmyra, the defence ministry in Moscow said.
"The Russian air force has increased the intensity of its strikes against targets of the armed units of international terrorist organizations near the city of Palmyra," the ministry said in a statement Thursday on its Facebook page.
"Since July 12, Russian air force planes have conducted more than 50 strikes against Islamic State personnel and material in this area."
Six Tupolev bombers flew out of an airbase in Russia on Thursday morning and conducted strikes east of Palmyra, near the cities of Arak and Sukhna, as well as in the Homs region, the statement said.
The ministry said the strikes had destroyed "a command centre, a field camp for IS fighters, two oil processing plants and a large quantity of the enemy's personnel and military hardware."
IS fighters were forced out of Palmyra by Syrian regime forces in March with Russian backing, but Arak and Sukhna remain out of the government's control.
Arak, located 35 kilometres (21 miles) east of Palmyra, is a small town that has strategic importance because of a nearby oil field, while Sukhna, 70 km northeast of Palmyra, is an IS bastion.
Russia is stepping up its bombing campaign in Syria as US Secretary of State John F.
I was in Vietnam, you knowKerry
Former Senator-for-Life from Massachussetts, self-defined war hero, speaker of French, owner of a
lucky hat,conqueror of Cambodia, and current Secretary of State...
is set to meet President Vladimir Putin
...Second and fourth President and sixth of the Russian Federation and the first to remain sober. Putin is credited with bringing political stability and re-establishing something like the rule of law, which occasionally results in somebody dropping dead from polonium poisoning. Under Putin, a new group of business magnates controlling significant swathes of Russia's economy has emerged, all of whom have close personal ties to Putin. The old bunch, without close personal ties to Putin, are in jail or in exile or dead...in Moscow on Thursday in Washington's latest bid to revive the stalled Syrian grinding of the peace processor.
Kerry's visit to Russia -- his second this year -- comes as bloodshed continues in defiance of a series of failed ceasefires.
Russia and the US appear increasingly at odds over the way forward amid heightened diplomatic tensions.