The strikes hit a "military base" for the al-Hamza Division outside the north Syria town of Afrin which has been under the control of
...the only place on the face of the earth that misses the Ottoman Empire...and its Syrian rebel proxies since 2018, said the Britannia-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
"Seven fighters were killed and another 13 were maimed in the Russian strikes," said the monitor, which relies on a network of sources inside Syria.
It said the corpse count could climb further amid ongoing efforts to pull victims from the rubble.
Observatory head Rami Abdul Rahman said such Russian raids are rare in this region of Syria, which has been controlled by Turkey and its Syrian rebel allies for three years.
A Russian raid outside Afrin last month targeted a position for Faylaq al-Sham, another Turkey-backed rebel group, he said.
A spokesperson for the National Army, a coalition of Turkey-backed rebel groups, called Sunday's attack a "clear message from Russia" to Turkey, showing that there are no "red lines".
Turkey supports Syrian rebel forces battling Hereditary President-for-Life Bashir
Pencilneckal-Assad
Horror of Homs...
's government and it has also launched multiple operations across Syria's northern border against Kurdish forces and against the Islamic State
...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that they were al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're really very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling
Allaharound with every other sentence, but to hear western pols talk they're not
reallyMoslems....
group.
Russia, on the other hand, is a staunch supporter of the Syrian regime and has intervened militarily in support of Assad since 2015.
Although they back opposite sides, Ankara and Moscow have worked together to broker several ceasefire deals in Syria's northwest, including a 2020 ceasefire agreement in the Idlib region, the country's last major opposition bastion.
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Hamza Division: 2021-09-24 Name changes fail to improve opposition image in Syria's northwest
Hamza Division: 2021-09-11 Turkish soldiers, Syrian militias killed in al-Bab: Kurdish forces
Hamza Division: 2021-09-10 Five Turkish-backed factions announce new military formation in northern Syria