© Al-Masdar NewsISIS slips into Syria, oops!
The Russian Defense Ministry has accused the US-led international coalition of "simulating" the fight against ISIS in Iraq. The coalition conducted fewer airstrikes in Iraq in September while well-armed terrorists crossed into Syria, Moscow added.
For the past week, the focus of the Russian-led air campaign in Syria has been to annihilate terrorists in the city of Al-Mayadeen, one of the terrorists' last strongholds southeast of the city of Deir ez-Zor.
Despite being almost encircled by the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) in Al-Mayadeen, Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL)
terrorists continue to replenish their ranks and supplies in the Euphrates Valley, where the US-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) are conducting their own operation against terrorists in the resource-rich region of Syria, the Russian Defense Ministry said.
According to last week's estimates the Syrian military, with Russian air support, had liberated over 90 percent of Syria from IS forces.
Stressing that no one really doubts the inevitable defeat of IS terrorism in Deir ez-Zor, the Defense Ministry on Tuesday has questioned the US-led coalition's anti-terrorist effort in Iraq.
"The ongoing fueling of terrorists from Iraq raises serious questions about the real objectives of anti-terrorist operations conducted in the region by the US and the so-called 'international coalition' jets," the ministry's spokesman, Major General Igor Konashenkov, noted in Tuesday's statement.
Konashenkov wondered if the US-led anti-IS coalition had changed its priorities in Syria
"to complicate as much as possible" the Syrian Army's operation to liberate the territory east of the Euphrates River, or if the US plan
envisages driving all IS terrorists into Syria where the Russian Air Force will "take care" of them.
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