Russia targets IS with cruise missiles launched from Mediterranean
Russia has previously fired missiles at Syria. ministry said in a statement. It did not say when the missiles were launched.
Russia is one of the strongest backers of Syrian president Bashar Assad’s government and has been carrying out air strikes in the country since September 2015. Launches from a submarine and a frigate in May were aimed at targets near the ancient city of Palmyra
Separately, senior Russian politician Viktor Ozerov, head of the defence and security committee at the upper chamber of the parliament said Moscow is “nearly 100 per cent” sure the top IS leader died in a Russian air strike last month.
The defence ministry first made the claim last week, saying Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi’s death in the May 28 strike on the outskirts of Raqqa was still “being verified through various channels”.
“Russia would not want to be on the list of the countries that have said before that he was killed and then al-Baghdadi would resurrect,” Mr Ozerov added.
The whereabouts of the shadowy al-Baghdadi, with a 25 million dollar (£19.6 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 al-Nuri mosque from where he declared a “caliphate” in the territory that IS had seized in Iraq and Syria in July 2014.
That mosque, along with its famous leaning minaret, was destroyed on Wednesday, blown up by IS militants as their control of Mosul slips away. The mosque would have been a symbolic prize for Iraqi forces and the US-led coalition in the fight for Iraq’s second-largest city.
Elsewhere, China’s foreign minister has called for a political solution to end Syria’s six-year crisis, saying once the country’s security conditions begin to improve refugees will return to their country.
Wang Yi made his comments in Beirut during a news conference with his Lebanese counterpart, Gibran Bassil. Some 1.5 million Syrian refugees who fled the conflict are believed to be in Lebanon.