Russia denies hitting civilians in its air strikes
Paris, Moscow: The Prime Minister of France, Manuel Valls, has put forward a request to Moscow to cease hitting civilian areas in its air strikes in Syria, where it has been trying to counter forces of the terrorist group ISIS and the Syrian rebels for the last several months. Russia, a country that is in support of the President of Syria, Bashar al-Assad and his government, continues to deny its forces hitting civilians.
Said Dmitry Medvedev, the Prime Minister of Russia, that there is “no evidence of our bombing civilians, even though everyone is accusing us of this”. Meanwhile, the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights has alleged last month that at least 1,015 civilians have been killed by Russian bombs. In a recent conference of world leaders in Munich, where they made an agreement to put an end to the ‘hostilities’ in Syria within one week, Mr. Valls commented, “France respects Russia and Russia’s interests but that to re-discover the path to peace, to discussion, the Russian bombing of civilians has to stop.”
The conference on Thursday, decided to work towwards improving channels of humanitarian aid to unapproachable and under-attack areas, along with an eventual ceasefire so as to effectively lead to a UN-backed ‘political transition’ in Syria. However, it was made clear that the ceasefire would not include the military offensives against jihadist groups like ISIS and the al-Nusra Front.
Again, Mr. Medvedev was forced to reiterate that Russia holds no vested interests or goals in Syria but is only trying ‘ protect’ its ‘national interests’. At the same time, Syrian rebels have refused to stop striking because they do not thust Russia to terminate its bomb raids—Russia will continue to stand by Assad and his government. Moreover, they reinforced their objective of having Mr. Assad ousted from power. On the other hand, Mr. Assad was quoted on Friday as saying that he desires to ‘retake the whole country’ from rebels.
A representative of the US State Department, Mark Toner, then commented that Mr. Assad was ‘deluded’ if he believed in any military exercise to be a solution to the problem.
In a war that has continued for nearly five years, 250,000 civilians have lost their lives and at least another 11 million have been displaced. The International Coalition continues to actively carry out raids over terrorist strongholds in Syria.
Source: BBC
Tags: air strikes France Russia Syria
