Russian air raids hit central, northern Syria

Moscow claims Islamic State bunker hit, while rights group says strikes killed 39 civilians

DAMASCUS, SYRIA— Russian warplanes have attacked the Islamic State group and other insurgents in central and northern Syria with a wave of new airstrikes, Syrian and Russian military officials said Saturday.

An activist group said Russia’s air raids have killed 39 civilians over the past three days.

The new airstrikes came as residents of Syria’s central regions fear the Russians are paving the way for a ground offensive by the government on several towns in the central province of Hama and the northwestern region of Idlib, where the Syrian army suffered major setbacks over the past months, activists said.

A Russian military spokesman, Maj.-Gen. Igor Konashenkov, said the warplanes flew 20 missions in Syria over the past day, hitting nine Islamic State targets. He said an Islamic State command post and a weapons storage bunker were destroyed in the area of Raqqa, the extremists’ de facto capital.

Col.-Gen. Andrei Kartapolov, a top official in the Russian military’s general staff, said Russian pilots had flown more than 60 sorties since Wednesday, targeting Islamic State command posts, ammunition storehouses and weapons-production factories.

“Our intelligence has determined that the militants are leaving the areas they control. Panic and desertion have begun in their ranks,” Kartapolov said in a briefing transcript posted on the Defence Ministry’s Face- book page. “We will not only continue attacks by our airplanes, but will increase their intensity.”

In Damascus, an unnamed Syrian military official was quoted by state TV as saying that the “concentrated and precise” airstrikes destroyed a command centre in the central town of Latamneh in Hama province and targeted positions in the northwestern areas of Jisr al-Shughour and Maaret al-Numan.

Islamic State has no presence in the northwestern province of Idlib, which includes Jisr al-Shughour and Maaret al-Numan.

The Russian airstrikes that began Wednesday have mainly targeted central and northwestern Syria, strategic regions that are the gateway to President Bashar Assad’s strongholds in the capital, Damascus, and along the Mediterranean coast.

Russia has said it is targeting Islam- ic State and Al Qaeda’s Syrian affiliate, but at least some of the strikes appear to have hit western-backed rebel factions.

Later Saturday, the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said warplanes believed to be Russian attacked the central town of Hobeit in Idlib province.

The air raid came as hundreds of people fled their homes in areas near Hobeit fearing a ground offensive by government forces, activists said.

The Observatory’s chief, Rami Abdurrahman, said the first three days of Russian airstrikes on Syria have killed 39 civilians and 14 militants without saying whether the fighters included Islamic State members.

The Observatory said that Russian warplanes struck a hospital in the mountains of the coastal province of Latakia causing damage but no casualties.