Russia says its military is bombing anti-government forces in Syria

Russia’s military says its air force is bombing anti-government forces in Syria to repel “extremists” that have launched a major offensive on the city of Aleppo, Russian state news agencies reports.

Jihadists and their Turkish-backed allies reached Syria’s second city earlier today, pressing a lightning offensive against forces of the Iranian- and Russian-backed government.

The fighting is some of the deadliest in years in Syria’s civil war.

“The Russian air force is carrying out rocket-bomb attacks on the equipment and manpower of illegal armed groups, control points, warehouses and artillery positions of terrorists,” news agencies report a spokesperson for the defense ministry’s Reconciliation Centre for Syria as saying.

It claims that 200 militants had been “destroyed” over the last 24 hours.

AFP could not verify that figure.

“The operation to repel the aggression of the extremists continues,” says Oleg Ignasyuk, deputy head of the Russian reconciliation center, state media reported.

Moscow is Syrian leader Bashar Assad’s most important military backer, having turned the tide of the civil war in his favor when it intervened in 2015.