Russia denies conducting fatal air strikes in Syria’s Idlib

Russia on Tuesday denied its planes had conducted air strikes overnight against the Syrian rebel-held city of Idlib, which the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said had killed 23 people.

“Russian planes did not carry out any combat missions, to say nothing of any air strikes, in the province of Idlib,” Igor Konashenkov, a Russian defence ministry spokesman, said in a statement.

The Observatory had earlier said the air strikes targeted a number of positions in the city, one of them next to a hospital. Seven children were among the dead, Observatory director Rami Abdulrahman said.

The Turkish foreign ministry said the strikes had killed more than 60 civilians and complained in a statement about what it said were the “indefensible” crimes of the Russian and Syrian governments.

Mr Konashenkov called the Observatory’s allegations “a horror story” of the kind he said it had disseminated in the past and said such pronouncements should be regarded with greater scepticism.

Idlib is a stronghold of rebel groups including the al Qaeda-linked Nusra Front.

Denied

Since the Russian military campaign began last September in an effort to shore up Syrian president Bashar al-Assad’s forces in their battle against Islamic militants, Moscow has staunchly denied that its war planes have hit any civilian areas in Syria.

The Nusra Front is considered a terrorist group by the US and United Nations and has been excluded from previous ceasefire agreements between government forces and rebels.

The Army of Conquest announced it had suspended its non-emergency civilian administration in Idlib after the air strikes, according to the Local Co-ordination Committees.

The group responded to the air strikes by shelling the nearby besieged towns of Foua and Kefraya, according to the Observatory. The two towns are seen as loyal to the government.

Frustration

Reports of violence on Monday night came a day after the opposition’s chief negotiator resigned in frustration over the stalled Geneva peace talks with Mr Assad’s government.

Mohammed Alloush said Syrian government forces continued attacking the opposition and besieging rebel-held areas despite the three rounds of negotiations in Geneva.

The “proximity” talks that began in January have failed to make any progress amid contrary demands by the opposition team and the government delegation.

The Syrian opposition has insisted that political transition should come first while the government says fighting terrorism should be the priority. The last round was held in April and no date has been set for the next talks.

As evidence of the talks’ failure, Mr Alloush said the UN had not been able to set up a transitional governing body for Syria or find a political solution to the crisis.

The opposition has been insisting that Mr Assad and top officials in his government have no role in Syria’s future, or even during the transitional period.

Mr Alloush said he handed in his resignation to the opposition’s High Negotiations Committee and described his move as a “protest against the international community”, which he hoped would come to realise “the importance of the Syrian blood that is being shed by the (Damascus) regime and its allies”.

Josephine Guerrero, a spokeswoman for UN special envoy for Syria Staffan de Mistura, said the resignation was an “internal matter for the HNC”.

“We look forward to continuing our work with all sides to ensure that the process moves forward,” she said.

Meanwhile, opposition activists reported intense government air strikes in the northern province of Aleppo on Monday.

The province has witnesses some of the worst violence over the past months and has also seen clashes lately between rebels and members of the extremist Islamic State group, which captured several villages last week before losing two of them again on Sunday.

Agencies