Russian jets hit Syria’s Homs, Hama province: monitor and residents

Air strikes by suspected Russian jets hit targets around the town of Talbiseh in western Syria on Sunday, residents and a group which monitors the civil war in Syria said, a day after Russia promised to step up its air campaign.

Ambulances rushed wounded people 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.

“So far there are seven or six raids in the town,” said Abdul Ghafar al Dweik, a former government employee and volunteer rescue worker.

He said he believed the raid was carried out by Russian jets. “They come suddenly… With the Syrian planes, we would get a warning but now all of a sudden we see it over our heads,” he said.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which monitors Syria’s four-year-old civil war through a network of sources, said Russian planes struck on Sunday in Homs province and also in neighboring Hama.

Reuters