Russia seeks to ramp up Syria bombing campaign

Russian bombing raids went into their fifth day

Russia today prepared to ramp up its bombing campaign in Syria as Moscow challenged the West's distinction between jihadist and other Islamist rebel groups.

Russian bombing raids against what Moscow says are Islamic State targets went into their fifth day despite criticism from Washington and its allies that the military action may be strengthening the jihadists.

President Vladimir Putin's spokesman said that Russia's Western partners had failed to explain the term "moderate opposition" as monitors claimed that Russian jets had bombed two Syrian villages, killing one person.

Putin, who met the leaders of France and Germany in Paris on Friday, had "expressed a lively interest in the subject and asked what the difference between the moderate opposition and the immoderate opposition is," Dmitry Peskov said on television late yesterday.

"So far, no one really has managed to explain what the moderate opposition is."

Washington accuses Russia of seeking to buttress Syria's Bashar al-Assad blamed for unleashing a conflict that has killed more than 240,000 people over the past four years and making little distinction between Western-backed moderate opposition and IS fighters.

But Moscow is keen to turn the tables on Washington, suggesting it is Washington and its allies that often hit the wrong targets.

"When the conversation has turned to this, our president remembered," Peskov said of the Paris talks.

"He also remembered the wedding in Yemen and so on," Peskov added, referring to more than 130 people killed during the recent bombing of a wedding for which the Saudi-led coalition denied responsibility.

An apparent US air strike on an Afghan hospital that killed 19 people yesterday is also expected to play into the Kremlin's hands.

US President Barack Obama called Russia's intervention a "recipe for disaster" but pledged Washington would not be drawn into a proxy war.

British Prime Minister David Cameron said Russia was "backing the butcher Assad and helping him and really making the situation worse."

French Prime Minister Manuel Valls for his part urged Moscow to direct strikes at IS jihadists alone.

But some in Europe say Russia has to have a greater role in the plan to eradicate the jihadists.

"It is obvious that if we are not successfully making peace in Syria, then the migratory pressure will not decrease in Europe," Hungary's foreign minister Peter Szijjarto told the UN General Assembly.

Putin has said Moscow needs to hunt down IS militants before they cross into Russia, which has a large Muslim population.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said that "warplanes, believed to be Russian, carried out many strikes against two villages in the north of Homs province."

One person was killed and others injured, it said.

The areas hit by the strikes, are largely controlled by rebels, the Al-Nusra Front and other Islamist groups, the observatory said.