Syrian President Bashar al-Assad said that his nation, Russia, Iran and Iraq were united in battling terrorism and were likely to succeed, but warned that the cost of failure would be devastating for the Middle East.
The four nations would achieve “practical results,” unlike a US-led international coalition whose year-long campaign of air strikes against Islamic State militants in Syria and Iraq had seen an expansion of violence, al-Assad was quoted as telling Iranian Khabar TV in an interview, parts of which were aired yesterday.
Syria and its allies must succeed “or we face destruction of the whole region,” the Syrian presidency’s Twitter feed quoted al-Assad as saying in the interview.
Photo: Reuters
He called on countries that support the armed opposition to stop, which would increase the chances of the campaign to succeed.
He also said that only Syrians could decide on changes to the country’s political system or its leaders, the Twitter account said.
“Discussion about the political system or officials in Syria is an internal Syrian affair,” it quoted al-Assad as saying.
Al-Assad’s international opponents say any political solution to Syria’s four-year-old civil war must involve him stepping aside.
The Syrian authorities yesterday detained a prominent opposition figure, days after he criticized Russian air strikes in Syria, his movement said.
Munzer Khaddam, spokesman for the National Coordination Committee for Democratic Change, was stopped at a checkpoint near Damascus, the group said.
Khaddam on Thursday posted critical comments on Facebook about the air strikes that Russia launched against jihadists and rebels in Syria the previous day.
On Saturday, at least six people were killed in airstrikes in northern Syria, including a family of five and a rescue worker who was fatally wounded while searching for victims, according to a spokesman for the rescue workers and a local anti-government activist.
It was not immediately clear who carried out the airstrikes, which hit rebel-held areas in Idlib Province that are being bombed regularly by both the Syrian government and Russia, which entered the war last week.
Russian officials have said they are fighting the Islamic State (IS) extremist group, but dozens of Russian airstrikes have largely targeted other anti-government militants.
The Syrian rescue worker, Issam al-Saleh, a member of the White Helmets civil defense organization, was the 108th member of the group to be killed during the Syrian conflict, said James Le Mesurier, a spokesman for the group.
Saleh, 29, had worked for the group for a year and a half, and had two children, Le Mesurier said.
Amer Bakri, an anti-government media activist in Idlib, said the airstrike that killed Saleh was among a half-dozen bombings that hit a poultry farm in the Ihsim region, where people who fled their homes had taken shelter.
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