(Reuters) – Russian military forces carried out air strikes on a drone warehouse in Syria’s Idlib governorate, the Russian Interfax news agency reported, citing Rear Admiral Vadim Kulit, deputy head of the Russian Reconciliation Center for Syria, on Sunday.
“The Russian Aerospace Forces launched an air strike … against a warehouse of unmanned aerial vehicles of militants involved in shelling the positions of Syrian government troops,” Kulit was quoted as saying.
No information about the scale of the damage or potential casualties was available.
The Syrian army has blamed rebels, who it says are Islamist jihadists, for attacks on government-held areas in Idlib and Aleppo provinces and denies indiscriminate shelling of civilian areas in areas under rebel control.
Opposition officials say both Moscow and Damascus are taking advantage of the world’s preoccupation with the Gaza conflict to escalate pounding of a region where over three million inhabitants refuse to live under the authoritarian rule of Syrian President Bashar al Assad.
(Reporting by Lidia Kelly in Melbourne; Editing by Richard Chang)
