Moscow’s Defense Ministry: ISIS is Using Mosques for Shelter, May Bomb Them to Implicate Russia
By Patrick Goodenough |
October 7, 2015 | 4:35 AM EDT
(CNSNews.com) – Russia’s Defense Ministry warned Tuesday that militants in Syria may bomb mosques and then try to implicate the Russians, who are carrying out airstrikes in support of the Assad regime.
The ministry accused Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) terrorists of sheltering in or near mosques, and released video footage taken from a drone which, it claims, shows weaponry and equipment being driven from wooded locations into an inhabited area and parked adjacent to a large mosque. It did not identify the town or the mosque.
“After having recognized the high effectiveness of detection of armament and military hardware storages and the real threat of immediate liquidation, the terrorists are taking efforts to transport weapons to inhabited areas,” the ministry said in a statement.
“As a rule, militants are deploying the armored hardware in close proximity to the mosques because they perfectly know that Russian aviation would never perform strikes on them.”
The statement said that “moderate citizens” would never use peaceful civilians as human shields and would never “gather armed vehicles under the cover of religious institutions.”
“All these actions are nothing but the signature of the terrorism.”
The ministry said it was possible that the groups were now “intentionally preparing acts of provocation such as detonation of mosques in order to demonstrate fake photos and videos to indict the Russian aviation.”
It quoted Deputy Defense Minister Anatoly Antonov as saying that terrorists “know our careful and respectful attitude to mosques. They clearly understand that we will never, on no condition, make strikes on non-military objects.”
Russia claims to be targeting ISIS in its air offensive launched a week ago. The U.S. and NATO say that it has been hitting other groups, including some anti-Assad opposition groups backed by the West.
Islamic terrorists frequently take shelter in civilian areas, either to minimize the likelihood of being targeted there, or in the hope that the enemy will unintentionally harm civilians – and draw international condemnation.
ISIS has been accused of using the “human shield” tactic in Iraq, as have the Taliban in Afghanistan, Hezbollah in Lebanon, and Hamas in the Gaza Strip.
http://cnsnews.com/news/article/patrick-goodenough/moscows-defense-ministry-isis-using-mosques-shelter-may-bomb-them
