Russia’s Giving ISIS An Air Force - The Daily Beast: Last June, the U.S. embassy in Damascus accused Bashar al-Assad’s air force of clearing a path for an ISIS advance on Syrian rebels in the Aleppo town of Azaz. “Reports indicate that the regime is making air strikes in support of [ISIS’s] advance on Aleppo, aiding extremists against Syrian population,” the embassy account tweeted, following up with a broader accusation: “We have long seen that the regime avoids [ISIS] lines, in complete contradiction to the regime’s claims to be fighting [ISIS].”
Now Russia seems to have inherited Assad’s role as the unacknowledged air force of ISIS.
On Wednesday, Russian President Vladimir Putin’s fighter jets rocketed an ammunition storehouse, destroying artillery, armored personnel carriers and even tanks belonging to Liwa Suqour al-Jabal, or The Mountain Eagles, a U.S.-backed brigade of the Free Syrian Army. A video uploaded by the brigade to YouTube shows the burning wreckage of the Russian airstrike, in Mansoura, in the western suburbs of Aleppo, as the local commander known as Abu Mohammed taunts his enemy: “Thank God, we are all fine,” says Abu Mohammed. “We don’t fear Russia or anyone helping the Russians. Bashar, we will remain resistant fighting you even without any ammunition or bullets. We will fight you with knives. We don’t need ammunition, Allahu Akhbar.”
