Moscow denies hit on historic Syrian city, flying over Turkey
THE Russian defence ministry angrily dismissed reports that it launched air strikes against the Syrian city of Palmyra as false yesterday, the TASS news agency reported.
The reports were “an absolute lie”, ministry spokesman Maj-Gen Igor Konashenkov said. “Our planes in Syria do not strike populated areas and especially not ones with architectural monuments,” he said.
Syrian state television and a monitoring group said earlier Russian jets had hit Islamic State targets in Palmyra.
Earlier, the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (Nato) rejected Moscow’s explanation that its warplanes violated the air space of alliance member Turkey at the weekend by mistake, saying Russia was sending more ground troops to Syria and building up its naval presence.
With Russia extending air strikes to include the ancient city of Palmyra, Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan said he was losing patience with Russian violations of his country’s air space. “An attack on Turkey means an attack on Nato,” he warned.
Nato secretary-general Jens Stoltenberg said the alliance had reports of a substantial Russian military build-up in Syria, includ- ing ground troops and ships in the eastern Mediterranean.
“I will not speculate on the motives ... but this does not look like an accident, and we have seen two of them,” Mr Stoltenberg said of the air space incursions over Turkey’s border with Syria. He noted that they “lasted for a long time”.
The incidents, which Nato has described as “extremely dangerous” and “unacceptable”, underscore the risks of a further escalation of the Syrian civil war, as Russian and US warplanes fly combat missions over the same country for the first time since the Second World War.
The Russian defence ministry had said that one of its SU-30 warplane had entered Turkish air space along the border with Syria “for a few seconds” on Saturday, a mistake caused by bad weather.
Nato says a plane also entered Turkish air space on Sunday, an incident Russia says it is investigating.
Separately, a US official said the incursions lasted more than a few seconds.
The official described Moscow’s assertion that the incursions were an accident as “far-fetched”.
Mr Stoltenberg said the USled alliance had not received “any real explanation” from Russia about the incursions.
Disagreement over the air space violations came after disputes over the exact aims of the Russian air campaign.
Moscow says it is attacking Islamic State, but the West has accused it of striking other rebel groups to prop up its ally, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
Russia’s Nato envoy said that the alliance was using the accidental air space incursion to distort the aims of Moscow’s air campaign in Syria, according to TASS.