MOSCOW (Dispatches) – Russian airstrikes have killed as many as 120 Daesh terrorists who were trying to flee the outfit’s last stronghold of Raqqah in northern Syria for the ancient city of Palmyra in the central part of the Arab country, a Russian Defense Ministry source says.
On Saturday, Russia’s Sputnik news agency cited a source with the country’s Defense Ministry as saying that the development had taken place two days earlier.
"As a result of these strikes, 32 pick-up trucks were destroyed and some 120 terrorists were killed,” the source said.
Daesh seized Raqqah in 2014, the same year when it started its campaign of terror in Syria. It then proceeded to capture large swathes of Syrian territory.
Russia has been lending aerial support to the Syrian counterterrorism operations since last September. The combined push is also being reinforced by Lebanese resistance fighters and Iranian military advisors.
The terrorists’ turf has now dwindled to just Raqqah.
The Russian source said the Russian military had received reports that the terrorists had entered a deal with the so-called Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), which has been fighting the Damascus government since 2011. In line with the agreement, the SDF would allow the Daesh terrorists leave the city, in spite of the concerted international endeavor aimed at limiting their presence to the city.
"Upon receiving this information, the command of the Russian contingent in Syria has taken measures to prevent the exodus of Daesh terrorists in the southern direction,” the source said. "Any attempts by Daesh militants to move toward Palmyra and to build up their forces there will be squashed.”
The development comes as the United Nations has failed to denounce Washington for the death of over 100 civilians in the latest U.S.-led coalition airstrikes in eastern Syria, merely urging air forces operating in the Arab country to be more cautious.
"The rising toll of civilian deaths and injuries already caused by airstrikes in Dayr al-Zawr and Raqqah suggests that insufficient precautions may have been taken in the attacks,” UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra'ad Zeid al-Hussein said in a statement on Friday.
Zeid's remarks came a day after the U.S.-led airstrikes in Mayadin town of Syria's oil-rich eastern province of Dayr al-Zawr killed at least 117 civilians, mostly women and children, according to the so-called Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. Relatives of Daesh terrorists were reportedly among the dead.
"There are multiple air forces operating in this part of Syria including the (U.S.-led) coalition, mainly the coalition," Zeid's spokesman Rupert Colville told a Geneva briefing on Friday, adding, "I can't begin to identify who is responsible."
Zeid said that on May 15 over two dozen farm workers, mostly women, had been killed in airstrikes on a village in Syria’s Raqqah Province and nearly 60 civilians had lost their lives in air raids on residential areas of Dayr al-Zawr.
The U.S.-led coalition has denied having a role in the airstrikes.