‘No mass killings of Russians in Syria’

Moscow — Media reports about hundreds of Russians killed while fighting in Syria is “classic disinformation”, Russia’s RIA news agency quoted a Russian Foreign Ministry source as saying on Wednesday.

Associates of Russian military contractors fighting alongside government forces in Syria have said there were large-scale casualties among the contractors when US-led forces clashed with progovernment forces in Syria’s Deir El Zor province on February 7.

A Kremlin spokesman said on Wednesday he could not rule out that there were Russian civilians in Syria, but that they had no connection to the Russian armed forces.

A senior lawmaker says the Russian parliament is working on a bill to regulate private military companies. Retired General Vladimir Shamanov, head of the defence committee in the lower house of Russia’s parliament, said on Wednesday in remarks carried by Russian news agencies that the state needs to oversee private military contractors.

Meanwhile, a US-led coalition drone has destroyed a Russiandesigned tank in eastern Syria close to the scene of last week’s attack on pro-government forces that left more than 100 Damascus loyalists dead, officials said on Tuesday.

The strike on the T-72 tank occurred on Saturday near Al Tabiyeh, in Deir Ezzor province, the Pentagon said in a statement.

“We detected and saw a tank that took a shot at us,” Lt-Gen Jeffrey Harrigian, who heads up Air Force operations for the region, told Pentagon reporters.

“It continued to move, so we... executed self-defence rules of engagement to protect ourselves.”

While presence of russian civilians in syria cannot be ruled out, they have no connection to the russian armed forces Kremlin spokesman