France launched a new airstrike overnight in Syria against an ISIS training camp and further strikes will follow, Defense Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said Friday. "France hit ISIS in Syria last night in Raqqa...It is not the first time, nor will it be the last time," Le Drian said on Europe 1 radio. "French Rafale jets delivered bombs on this training camp and the targets were met," he added. "We struck because we know that in Syria, particularly around Raqqa, there are training camps for foreign fighters whose mission is not to fight for ISIS in the Levant but to come to France, in Europe, to carry out attacks," he said. France launched its first airstrike in Syria on Sept. 27, destroying an ISIS training camp near Deir al-Zor in the east of the country, saying at the time it was acting in "self defense". Le Drian said that ISIS was France's "main enemy" and that Russian airstrikes were mostly hitting Syrian President Bashar Assad's opponents in Syria and not ISIS targets. He reiterated that Assad, whom he said had killed 250,000 of his own people, could not be part of a political solution in Syria. France, which has provided weapons and logistical support to rebels linked to the Free Syrian Army in the past, has repeatedly said Assad would have to go before government troops and rebels could together defeat ISIS. Meanwhile, ISIS fighters have captured several Syrian villages from rival insurgents near Aleppo, an activist group said Friday, despite Russian airstrikes that Moscow says have targeted the hard-line group. Rami Abdulrahman, head of the Syria Observatory for Human Rights, said ISIS forces had taken over villages including Tel Suseen and Tel Qarah from other rebels groups just outside the city. The advance, which he said marked their biggest gains in the area since late August, brought them within 2 km (just over a mile) of a government-held industrial zone on the northern edge of Aleppo, the largest city in north Syria. Russian jets and warships have been bombarding targets across Syria for 10 days in a campaign which Moscow says is aimed at the ISIS fighters who control large parts of north and east Syria, as well as swathes of neighboring Iraq. But many Russian strikes have taken place in areas of western Syria held by other insurgent groups, and Western leaders have accused Russia of intervening primarily to support President Bashar Assad. Abdulrahman said he believed only 10 percent of the Russian strikes had hit ISIS targets. Supported by the Russian air campaign, Syrian troops and allied militias have launched an offensive against rebels in the Ghab Plain and other parts of the northern province of Hama, where Abdulrahman said clashes continued late into Thursday night.
