Russia says bombing anti-government forces in Syria

Jihadists and their Turkish-backed allies reached Aleppo, Syria’s second city, amid fighting that is some of the deadliest in years in Syria’s civil war.

Russia’s military said Friday its air force had bombed anti-government forces in Syria to repel “extremists” that have launched a major offensive on the city of Aleppo, Russian state news agencies reported.

Jihadists and their Turkish-backed allies reached Syria’s second city on Friday, pressing a lightning offensive against forces of the Iranian- and Russian-backed government.

Smoke billows from the site of clashes and mutual shelling between Syrian jihadists and allied factions and regime forces in Syria's Aleppo province on Thursday. Picture: Omar Haj Kadour / AFP

The fighting is some of the deadliest in years in Syria’s civil war.

“The Russian air force is carrying out rocket-bomb attacks on the equipment and manpower of illegal armed groups, control points, warehouses and artillery positions of terrorists,” news agencies reported a spokesperson for the defence ministry’s Reconciliation Centre for Syria as saying.

It claimed that 200 militants had been “destroyed” over the last 24 hours. AFP could not verify that figure.

“The operation to repel the aggression of the extremists continues,” said Oleg Ignasyuk, deputy head of the Russian reconciliation centre, state media reported.

Moscow is Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad’s most important military backer, having turned the tide of the civil war in his favour when it intervened in 2015.