Russia Targets in Syria Chosen in Cooperation With Assad Army

LONDON— -- Russia has launched at least 20 air strikes in northern Syria, its Defense Ministry said today, marking Russia’s biggest Middle East intervention in decades.

While Russian officials say they bombed at least four ISIS targets including “headquarters and coordination centers in the mountains," U.S. officials are concerned that is not the case and that Russia is targeting other militants, some of which could be U.S.-backed.

"It does appear that they were in areas where there probably were not ISIL forces, and that is precisely one of the problems with this whole approach,” U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter said Wednesday, using the government’s acronym for ISIS.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters today that “these targets have been determined in coordination with the Syrian armed forces," and that "all the flights took place after air surveillance and careful verification of the data provided by the Syrian military."

Jets flying at higher altitudes than the Syrian air force emitted no noise to alert the people below to raids, Reuters reported, killing at least 33 civilians, including children. But Peskov stressed that Russian jets did not target any civilian infrastructure.

A pro-Hezbollah, pro-Syrian President Bashar al-Assad TV station in Lebanon, Al Mayadeen, reported today that the strikes in the area of Jisr al-Shugour targeted militants of the “Army of Conquest,” which is dominated by hardline Islamist factions, including Nusra (al Qaeda), not ISIS.

At a news conference Wednesday, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said they agreed their countries should meet soon on the Syrian situation.

"We agreed on the imperative of as soon as possible, perhaps even as soon as tomorrow, but as soon as possible, having a military-to-military deconfliction discussion," Kerry said.

Such an approach would ensure that Russian aircraft do not interfere or clash with Western warplanes, which are already operating in the area.