Syria Blames U.S. in Base Bombing, but Americans Blame Russia
By HWAIDA SAAD and ERIC SCHMITTDEC. 7, 2015
BEIRUT, Lebanon — Syria on Monday said a United States-led coalition had bombed a Syrian military base in the east of the country, killing three soldiers, wounding at least 13 and destroying vehicles and equipment. The United States denied the Syrian accusation and said a Russian warplane appeared to have been responsible.
The Syrian accusation, in a statement carried by the official news agency, was the first time that President Bashar al-Assad’s government had held the Americans responsible for bombing a Syrian military facility since the United States began airstrikes against Islamic State targets in Syria more than a year ago.
The statement said that the bombing had been conducted Sunday evening in Deir al-Zour Province, and that Syria had sent letters of protest to the United Nations calling it “a heinous aggression by the coalition.”
American military officials said the coalition had carried out airstrikes in the province on Sunday, but they said no Syrian military positions had been struck. The Americans seemed anxious to avoid an escalation of tensions with Mr. Assad’s government.
A statement from the United States-led Combined Joint Task Force said that the coalition had conducted four airstrikes on Sunday, “all against oil well heads,” about 35 miles from the base. “We did not strike any vehicles or personnel targets in this area,” the statement said. “We have no indication any Syrian soldiers were even near our strikes.”
A senior United States official later attributed any deaths and any damage to the Syrian base to what he called “a screw-up” by the Russians, who joined the Syria war in September as allies of Mr. Assad and have conducted airstrikes with Backfire bombers and other aerial armaments.
“We’ve got a radar track showing a Backfire bomber flying directly over the town that the Syrians named a few minutes before the first claims that we killed some Syrian troops,” the American official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss operational details.
Russian officials had no immediate comment on either the Syrian government’s accusations against the American-led coalition or the American response implicating the Russians. But Dmitri S. Peskov, the spokesman for President Vladimir V. Putin, reiterated what he called the need for a combined effort to vanquish extremist militants in Syria.
“Both President Putin and Russian officials at various levels repeatedly emphasized our belief that an effective counteraction against these dangerous developments is only possible on the platform of a united coalition and an absolute coordination of any joint efforts,” Mr. Peskov said in comments reported by Russia’s Interfax news agency.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an independent monitoring group that tracks the conflict from Britain through a network of contacts on the ground, also reported on Monday that American coalition airstrikes had apparently hit a Syrian military post on Sunday near Ayyash, in the western part of Deir al-Zour.
The United States has recently escalated its attacks in the province, with the stated aim of disrupting large oil fields controlled by the Islamic State, an important source of the group’s revenue. In addition to the United States, Britain and France have recently started conducting airstrikes in Syria against the Islamic State.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/08/world/middleeast/syria-airstrikes.html?_r=0
