[AnNahar] Moscow on Monday said its warplanes had hit 472 targets in war-torn Syria in the past two days, including tanker trucks and oil infrastructure in territory controlled by the Islamic State
...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling Allah around with every other sentence, but to hear the pols talk they're not really Moslems....
group.
"In 141 combat sorties in the past two days, warplanes of the Russian airforce struck 472 terrorist targets in the provinces of Aleppo, Damascus, Idlib, Latakia, Hama, Homs, Raqa and Deir Ezzor," the Russian defense ministry said in a statement.
The military said that the latest strikes had destroyed 80 tanker trucks near the Islamic State stronghold of Raqa, as well as a large oil storage tank and a oil refinery south of the city.
Fuel reserves some 50 kilometers (31 miles) north of Deir Ezzor were also destroyed in the strikes, the defense ministry said.
The Russian defense ministry said last week that it was "hunting" oil transporters in a bid to cut IS financing and claimed that in the past five days some 1,000 fuel trucks had been destroyed.
The Russian military claimed that "terrorists" had suffered "serious losses" in Saraqib, a city in the northwestern province of Idlib province, and in the town of Qalaat al-Madiq in the Hama province. |