ERBIL, Kurdistan Region – Russia warned Washington of a “tectonic shift” in Syria if the United States were to attack the Syrian Army in a bid to oust President Bashar al-Assad.





“If the US launches a direct aggression against Damascus and the Syrian Army, it would cause a terrible, tectonic shift not only in the country, but in the entire region,” Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova warned in comments reported by Russia’s official RT news website.





Her warning came as Assad’s forces captured a strategic hill in the northern city of Aleppo, with Syrian and Russian jets providing air cover.





If Assad were to be ousted, there would be a vacuum that “so-called moderates, who are, in reality, not moderate at all but just terrorists of all flavors, would fill; and there will be no dealing with them,” Zakharova predicted.





“And later it would be aggravated the way it happened in Iraq. We know that (Saddam Hussein’s) Iraqi Army became the basis of the Islamic State. Everything that both the (US-led) coalition and Russia are fighting now stems from it,” Zakharova said.





Last month, warplanes from the US-led coalition bombed regime forces in Syria’s northeast, reportedly killing dozens of soldiers. The US said it believed the jets were targeting Islamic State (ISIS) positions and that the attack was stopped when Russian informed Washington that the planes were bombing the Syrian army.