Russia said Sunday its warplanes had carried out 20 missions during the day, striking 10 ISIS positions in the northwestern province of Idlib. The province is controlled by a rebel coalition known as Jaish al-Fatah, which includes the Nusra Front, but not ISIS. The statement also said the warplanes attacked an ISIS training camp in Raqqa province. The strikes, on the fifth day of the air campaign which a statement from Russia's Defense Ministry called pinpoint, had also destroyed three ammunition stores and four ISIS command centers. Residents and the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an activist group that monitors Syria's 4-year-old civil war through a network of sources, accused Russian jets of hitting targets around the town of Talbiseh in western Syria Sunday. Ambulances rushed the wounded to hospital in Talbiseh, north of the city of Homs, and one resident said at least five bodies had been recovered from the western part of the town. Activists reported at least two children and a shepherd were killed. A video posted on an activist media platform showed residents fleeing. "So far there are seven or six raids in the town," said Abdul Ghafar al-Dweik, a former state employee and volunteer rescue worker. Several rebel groups around Talbiseh operate under the umbrella of the Free Syrian Army, and some have received military support from Western and Gulf Arab states that oppose President Bashar Assad. The Observatory said Russian planes also struck in Homs province and in neighboring Hama. Russia says they targeted the hard-line ISIS militants but some of the areas struck have little or no ISIS presence.The airstrikes in Hama targeted a region in the east of the province controlled by ISIS fighters, the Observatory said. Andrei Kartapolov from the Russian army General Staff said in a statement Saturday that Russian jets based in western Syria had carried out more than 60 sorties in 72 hours. Moscow claimed airstrikes Saturday targeting ISIS have sown "panic," forcing some 600 "militants" to abandon their positions and head to Europe. "Our intelligence shows that militants are leaving areas under their control. Panic and desertion have started in their ranks," Kartapolov said. He said Russia had managed to destroy ISIS command posts, warehouses storing ammunition and explosives, communication hubs, training camps as well as "mini-factories that made weapons for suicide bombers." He also said that a task force Russia is setting up with Iraq, Iran and Syria had begun its work in Baghdad but expressed regret that the West had not moved to share intelligence. Tunisia's Prime Minister Habib Essid said Saturday that his country is joining the U.S.-led military coalition fighting ISIS in Syria and Iraq mainly to "exchange information." Joining the coalition would allow Tunis to "obtain all information linked to the war on terror in Tunisia," Habib Essid told media.
