UK’s RAF training for Syria airstrikes

● Russian airstrikes in Syria have killed at least 446 people, more than a third of them civilians, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group said

London/ Beirut, Oct. 23: Britain’s Royal Air Force ( RAF) pilots are secretly training to launch airstrikes on ISIS targets in Syria in anticipation of a Parliament vote to expand the UK’s involvement in the war- torn country.

RAF Tornado fighterbombers are currently restricted to hitting the terrorist group in Iraq from an airbase in Cyprus.

“We would be doing exactly the same job as we are doing in Iraq in a different piece of air space,” Air Commodore Martin Sampson, in charge of RAF’s Iraq mission, told the Times.

“The target is the same: ISIS. We are very well versed at striking them and we would do exactly the same thing in Syria. The Tornado crews are ready to execute the mission wherever the politicians deem it necessary”.

The expanded training received by the crews included understanding what the new operating area would be and any change to the weapons being dropped, the newspaper reported.

Prime Minister David Cameron is yet to signal when he plans to ask MPs to vote on widening the range of the RAF’s firepower against ISIS.

But the UK government feels it is illogical to restrict Britain’s Tornado jets and armed Reaper drones to Iraqi airspace when ISIS is active on both sides of the border.

Air Commodore Sampson said the recent addition of Russian jets operating in Syrian airspace would have little effect on any expanded British mission because of the ability of the US- led coalition to monitor airtraffic movement.

Precision strikes using Brimstone missiles against lone targets have prompted a change in the way that ISIS militants in Iraq operate.

Any shift to Syria could result in the requirement to deploy more Brimstone missiles again.

Meanwhile, Russian airstrikes in Syria have killed at least 446 people, more than a third of them civilians, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group said on Friday.

Russia launched an air war on opponents of the Syrian regime of President Bashar al- Assad on September 30 and says it is targeting the ISIS jihadist group and other “terrorists”.

Of the total killed since then, 151 are civilians and include 38 children and 35 women, Observatory chief Rami Abdel Rahman said.

Russia’s foreign minister Sergei Lavrov held talks on the war in Syria with US counterpart John Kerry on Friday.

Mr Lavrov shook hands with Mr Kerry as they sat down at a Vienna hotel for a crunch meeting that will then see the duo joined by Saudi foreign minister Adel al- Jubeir and Turkey’s Feridun Sinirlioglu.

Washington, Riyadh and Ankara — which all back groups battling against Mr Assad — are looking to sound out Mr Lavrov after the embattled Syrian strongman made a surprise visit to Moscow to meet President Vladimir Putin this week.

The US and its regional allies have decried Russia’s strikes, insisting Moscow is not focusing on ISIS as it claims, but other groups fighting the regime in Damascus, and that the Kremlin’s intervention will only prolong the bloodshed.

Mr Assad’s fate remains a major stumbling block for talks and after years of failure to stop the bloodshed in Syria there was scant hope of any major breakthrough in Vienna.

His visit to Moscow on Tuesday — his first known trip abroad since the start of the Syrian conflict in 2011 — has now placed the Kremlin as the key link to the strongman.