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Defense Ministry refutes reports about Russia's airstrikes on Idlib

"All the reports on these strikes are blatant lie", the ministry said
Idlib, northern Syria EPA/ABED
Idlib, northern Syria
© EPA/ABED

MOSCOW, February 7. /TASS/. Russia’s Aerospace Forces have not delivered strikes on Syria’s Idlib, Defense Ministry’s official spokesman Igor Konashenkov said on Tuesday.

"The aircraft of Russia’s Aerospace Forces did not deliver any air strikes on Idlib yesterday, this week or even since early 2017. All the reports on these strikes are blatant lie," Konashenkov stressed.

"Such information attacks are usually prepared by the same mass media, by one pattern, on a regular basis and always citing anonymous ‘civil defense’ activists," the spokesman said.

The Reuters news agency reported earlier that at least 15 people were killed in eight air strikes on Syria’s Idlib carried out by Russia’s Aerospace Forces on Tuesday.

The terrorist-controlled areas 

Experts almost completed the effort on designating areas in Syria controlled by the Islamic State and Jabhat al-Nusra at the meeting on Syria in Kazakhstan’s Astana, Sergey Rudskoy, the chief of the main operations directorate of the Russian General Staff, also said.

"At the meeting, the effort on fixing the areas controlled by the IS and Jabhat al-Nusra was almost completed. There are minor differences that will be agreed soon," Rudskoy said. This allows separating the opposition from terrorist groups, he added. 

The first session of a joint task force on monitoring ceasefire in Syria, comprising representatives of Russia, Turkey, Iran, and also the United Nations and Jordan, was held in Kazakhstan’s Astana on February 6. The task force was set up after the January 23-24 conference on the Syrian settlement in Astana. The next meeting of the group is scheduled for February 15-16.