Russia has warned against a call by US State Department officials for strikes against the Syrian government, saying Moscow is opposed to a military solution.

The Kremlin said on Friday such a move would plunge the entire region into complete chaos.

Dozens of State Department officials have signed an internal document that calls for targeted military strikes against the Syrian government, according to the Wall Street Journal.

US Secretary of State John Kerry said on Friday that the internal memo on Syria signed by more than 50 US diplomats is an “important statement” that he would discuss when he gets back to Washington.

“It’s an important statement and I respect the process, very, very much. I will … have a chance to meet with people when I get back,” Kerry told Reuters during a visit in Copenhagen.

The memo is sharply critical of US policy in Syria, calling for military strikes against the Assad government.

An unnamed US official familiar with the document said the internal cable may be an attempt to shape the foreign policy outlook of the next US administration.

“It is not a secret to us that there are political forces in the US who favor a military solution [to the Syrian crisis]. But this is not our method,” Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova said on Friday.

The United States and its allies have been conducting airstrikes against what are said to be Daesh terrorists inside Syria since September 2014 without any authorization from Damascus or a UN mandate.

The attacks have largely failed to fulfill their declared aim of destroying Daesh but killed civilians and targeted the Syrian infrastructure in many cases.

Washington has consistently refused to join forces with Russia in Syria against Daesh ever since Moscow launched its campaign of airstrikes in September last year.

On Thursday, a senior US defense official accused Russia of carrying out airstrikes in southern Syria against US-backed forces.

The accusation came a day after Kerry said the US was losing patience with Russia over its support for the Syrian government.

“Russia needs to understand that our patience is not infinite. In fact it is very limited with whether or not al-Assad is going to be held accountable,” he said.

Responding to those remarks, Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said he believed the US might hope to use al-Qaeda’s branch in Syria to unseat President Assad’s government.

Lavrov said in St. Petersburg on Thursday that the reluctance of US-backed opposition groups to distance themselves from the Nusra Front has been a major reason behind continuing fighting.

The US could be “playing some kind of game here, and they may want to keep al-Nusra in some form and use it to topple the regime,” Lavrov said.

Airstrikes carried out by the US and Arab allies on positions of the jihadist group “Islamic State” have caused heavy casualties, a monitoring group says. Damascus says it was informed of the operation.

The jihadist group “Islamic State” (IS) has suffered heavy casualties in the first airstrikes carried out on its positions in Syria by the United States and five Arab allies, a group monitoring the conflict in Syria said on Tuesday.

“The US planes carried out at least 20 strikes targeting headquarters, checkpoints and bases for the Islamic State group in the city of al- Raqqa as well as on its eastern and western outskirts,” the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said, adding that there was “confirmed information” that the airstrikes had inflicted heavy casualties on the militants.

Strikes were also carried out on the towns of Tabqa, Ein Issa and Tel Abayad on the Turkish border, Observatory head Rami Abdurrahman said.

The Observatory obtains its information from a large network of activists in the country. The reports cannot be independently verified.

The strikes were carried out by manned aircraft of the Air Force and Navy, while Tomahawk missiles were also fired at the start of the operation from US ships in the northern Persian Gulf and the Red Sea, a senior US official told broadcaster CNN.

Damascus ‘informed’

The air raids, authorized by US President Barack Obama less than two weeks ago, open up a new front against the IS militants, who have taken advantage of the civil conflict wracking Syria to gain a major foothold in the country. The US, with assistance from France, has been carrying out strikes on IS targets in neighboring Iraq since August 8.

US media have named Bahrain, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and the United Arab Emirates as the other countries involved in the aerial military operation. Washington has been endeavoring to form an international coalition to combat IS, receiving commitments from several European allies as well as Canada and Australia in addition to Arab nations.

The Syrian foreign ministry issued a brief statement on Tuesday carried by State media saying that “the American side informed Syria’s permanent envoy to the UN that strikes will be launched against the Daesh terrorist organization in Raqqa.” It used an Arabic name for the IS group, which has set up its self-declared Syrian capital in Raqqa.

Double bind

Washington has ruled out joint action against the militants with Syria, whose president, Bashar al-Assad, it sees as illegitimate amid a more than three-year uprising against his rule.

Some officials have voiced concern that attacking IS on Syrian soil could, however, inadvertently help Assad, as the jihadists are partly also fighting against the regime.

The US Congress last week passed legislation authorizing the military to arm and train moderate Syrian rebels aiming to overthrow Assad.

Regional threat

The airstrikes come after IS captured swathes of territory straddling Syria and Iraq, slaughtering thousands of people during its advance and displacing hundreds of thousands of others. International public opinion has been hardened against the group after its brutal execution of a British aid worker and two US journalists as well as reports of atrocities committed against both Iraqi and Syrian citizens.

Tuesday’s airstrikes came just hours after an IS-affiliated group in Algeria threatened to kill a French hostage unless France stops its airstrikes in Iraq.

The threat came after an IS website called on Muslims to kill citizens of all the nations that had joined the international coalition against the group.

tj/es (AFP, Reuters, AP)

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