The United States has plans to divide Syria, according to Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, who on Wednesday said he plans to discuss the matter with its American counterparts. The minister’s statement followed a US-led coalition attack that killed 100 Assad regime troops.
“It looks like in Syria the Americans have embarked on the course aimed at dividing the country,” Minister Lavrov said, according to TASS. “Plans for the actual partition of Syria do exist, and we are aware of that. We will ask our American counterparts how they see all that.”
According to Russia’s top diplomat, the US has reneged on its assurances that the only purpose of its presence in Syria “without an invitation from the legitimate government” is to defeat ISIS.
“Now they say that their presence will continue until they are convinced that a stable political settlement process, leading to regime change, has begun in Syria,” he said.
“The fact that the United States is cozying up to various groups of Syrian society which are opposing the government, including with weapons in their hands, would lead to very dangerous results,” Lavrov stressed.
On Wednesday, the US-led coalition fighting ISIS in Syria conducted air and artillery attacks on pro-regime forces in Syria, killing an estimated 100 pro-regime fighters, according to a coalition statement.
Syrian state news agency SANA described the action as an “aggression” by the US-led coalition against “popular forces” who had been in the midst of fighting ISIS and the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces.
The attack had left “scores of persons dead and others injured” and caused “huge damage” to the area, SANA reported.
According to a coalition statement, the airstrikes and artillery shelling were carried out after forces allied with Syrian President Assad “initiated an unprovoked attack” against a Syrian Democratic Forces headquarters, where coalition advisers were cooperating with the US-backed Syrian rebels.
According to the coalition statement, an estimated 500 regime troops carried out the initial attack using Russian-made tanks “in what appears to be a coordinated attack on Syrian Democratic Forces,” a US military official told CNN.