Russian jets hit Syria’s Homs, Hama provinces — monitor and residents

BEIRUT — Air strikes by suspected Russian jets hit targets around the town of Talbiseh in western Syria on Sunday, residents and a group which monitors the civil war in Syria said, a day after Russia promised to step up its air campaign.

Ambulances rushed wounded people to hospital in Talbiseh, north of the city of Homs, and one resident said at least five bodies had been recovered from the western part of the town.

“So far there are seven or six raids in the town,” said Abdul Ghafar Al Dweik, a former government employee and volunteer rescue worker.

He said he believed the raid was carried out by Russian jets. “They come suddenly... With the Syrian planes, we would get a warning but now all of a sudden we see it over our heads,” he said.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which monitors Syria’s four-year-old civil war through a network of sources, said Russian planes struck on Sunday in Homs province and also in neighbouring Hama.

Russia launched air strikes in Syria on Wednesday, saying they targeted the hardline Daesh militants who control large parts of eastern Syria and western Iraq. But some of the areas it has struck have little or no Daesh presence.

Several rebel groups around Talbiseh operate under the umbrella of the Free Syrian Army, and some have received military support from Western and Gulf Arab states that oppose President Bashar Assad.

The air strikes in Hama targeted a region in the east of the province controlled by Daesh fighters, the observatory said.

A senior Russian military officer said on Saturday Russian jets based in western Syria had carried out more than 60 sorties in 72 hours. “We will not only continue strikes... We will also increase their intensity,” said Andrei Kartapolov from the Russian army General Staff.