Russia fires missiles from Mediterranean at IS in Syria

MOSCOW — Russia fired cruise missiles from the Mediterranean Sea on positions of the Islamic State group in Syria, the Defence Ministry said on Friday, Moscow’s latest show of strength in the conflict wracking the Mideast country.

The ministry said in a statement that two frigates and a submarine launched six cruise missiles on ISIL installations in Syria’s Hama province, destroying command centres and ammunition depots. It did not say when the missiles were launched.

Moscow has fired missiles from the Mediterranean at militants’ positions in Syria before, including launches from a submarine and a frigate in May at the targets in the area of the ancient city of Palmyra.

Russia is one of the strongest backers of Syrian President Bashar Assad’s government and has been carrying airstrikes in the country since September 2015.

Separately on Friday, a senior Russian lawmaker said Moscow is “nearly 100 per cent” sure that the top ISIL leader was killed in a Russian airstrike last month.

The Defence Ministry first made the claim last week, saying that Abu Bakr alBaghdadi’s death in the May 28 strike on the outskirts of the Syrian city of Raqqa was still “being verified through various channels.”

The whereabouts of the shadowy al-Baghdadi, with a $25 million US bounty on his head, have not been known. His last public appearance was almost three years ago in the Iraqi city of Mosul, at the 12th century alNuri Mosque from where he declared a “caliphate” in the territory that ISIL had seized in Iraq and Syria in July 2014.

That mosque, along with its famous leaning minaret, was blown up Wednesday by ISIL militants as their control of Mosul slips away. The mosque would have been a symbolic prize for Iraqi forces and the U.S.-led coalition in the fight for Iraq’s second-largest city.