Syria and Russia Continue Coordinated Assault on Militants

BEIRUT, Lebanon — In a second day of a coordinated air and ground assaults in Syria, Russian warplanes, Syrian troops and their militia allies attacked insurgents on Thursday in a contested area of Hama Province, next to Syria’s coastal mountains, a critical government stronghold.

The attacks, reported by insurgents and by a monitoring group, came as the Syrian Army’s chief of staff, Lt. Gen. Ali Abdullah Ayoub, declared sweeping goals for the new offensive via state-run news media, saying that government forces would capitalize on the Russian airstrikes with “a wide-scale attack” aimed at rooting out insurgents, “liberating the areas and towns which have been suffering the woes and crimes of terrorism.”

Russia’s entry has upended the battlefield in Syria, where four years of war have left a quarter of a million dead and half the country displaced, giving a new infusion of morale to the government and deepening Russia’s alliance in Syria with President Bashar al-Assad, Iran and the Lebanese Shiite militia Hezbollah.

The focus of the newly intensified and coordinated campaign has been in an area straddling the provinces of Idlib and Hama, where insurgent gains in recent months seem to have spurred the increased Russian intervention.

The insurgent groups there do not include the Islamic State, which both Russia and the United States vow to defeat as it seeks to entrench its self-declared caliphate further east in Syria and Iraq. Rather, the groups are led by an Islamist coalition called Army of Conquest. That group includes Al Qaeda’s Syria affiliate and, while its main declared goal is ousting Mr. Assad, its member groups also clash with the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL.

Opponents of Mr. Assad, including the United States, argue that Russia’s approach will only strengthen Islamic State by leaving no other alternative to Mr. Assad, whose crackdown on political protests helped spark the insurgency. In contrast, Russia argues, much like the Syrian government, that there are no meaningful distinctions between ISIS and most other insurgent groups, making them all legitimate targets.

The new attacks on Thursday — reported by the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a monitoring group in Britain with extensive contacts in Syria — took place on the Ghab Plain, where the Army of Conquest had advanced in July, pushing south after seizing most of Idlib Province.

Insurgents in the Ghab Plain also include relatively secular groups who consider themselves part of the loose-knit Free Syrian Army, including some elements covertly equipped by the C.I.A. with advanced antitank missiles that have aided the recent Army of Conquest advances.

The United States has objected to Russia’s targeting such groups; Russian officials have said they have asked the Americans for the coordinates of armed groups fighting the Islamic State but have not received any. Some fighters with rebel groups that have received American aid even say, after several were hit by Russian strikes, that they have begun to worry that the Americans did hand over their coordinates — and that the Russians are using the data to pick them off.

The dispute puts the United States in the awkward position of either acquiescing to Russia’s attacks on the groups or objecting to the attacks, even though they fight alongside a Qaeda affiliate.

American warplanes flying over Syria have begun to alter their flight paths as necessary to avoid “unsafe” proximity to Russian fighters, the Pentagon acknowledged on Wednesday. Capt. Jeff Davis of the Navy told reporters that the United States had good awareness about the skies over Syria and had begun rerouting its airstrikes to pass well clear of the Russians. But there have been no direct communications between the two countries’ militaries since a video conference last week, he said. “We have taken some actions to ensure the safe separation of aircraft,” Captain Davis said.

Thursday’s clashes were slightly west of the ground fighting on Wednesday, in which insurgents said that — with the help of the antitank missiles — they had managed to stop a pro-government ground advance around three villages in Hama on the approach to the mountainous rebel-held territory of Jabal al-Zawiya.

Russian and Syrian airstrikes also continued for a second day in Al Bab and other areas of eastern Aleppo Province, undisputed Islamic State territory.

In his remarks, General Ayoub, the Syrian army commander, also apparently sought to play down the notion that Russia had taken over the war, saying that Syrian armed forces had “kept the reins of military initiative” by forming a new strike force, called the Fourth Assault Corps.

Courtsy: NEWYORK TIMES