A BITTER war of words has erupted between the US and Russia after a bungled air strike in Syria which involved Australian aircraft.

Russia’s Foreign Minister has criticised the United States as being obstructive and deceptive regarding the raid by coalition warplanes which left at least 83 Syrian soldiers dead.

Moscow has accused the US of pandering to Islamic State after the bungled bombing raid on what were believed to be IS targets in Deir Ezzor on Saturday.

The Syrian army has been fighting off an IS group offensive around the key Deir Ezzor air base, in the country’s east, since last year.

The bungle has left Syria’s delicate ceasefire on shaky ground and comes as the city of Aleppo was hit by its first air raids in nearly a week on Sunday.

Russia remains furious over the bungle and slammed the US, saying it amounted to “criminal negligence”.

In an emergency UN Security Council session, Russia’s foreign ministry said in a statement that the United States took “an unconstructive and indistinct position”.

The Americans “not only turned out to be unable to give an adequate explanation of what happened, but also tried, as is their custom, to turn everything upside down,” the statement said.

AUSTRALIA’S INVOLVEMENT

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull said Australia regretted the loss of life and injuries to Syrian soldiers as the result of a bombing raid on Saturday.

The prime minister confirmed Australian aircraft were involved in the coalition exercise but pulled out when Russian officials advised the targets may have been Syrian military personnel.

“We regret the loss of life and injury to any Syrian personnel affected,” Mr Turnbull told reporters overnight in New York, where he is for the annual United Nations General Assembly.

He said Australia’s rules of engagement were to target IS but it is a very complex environment.

“You’ll find over the next little while no doubt arguments or issues about why there wasn’t more co-ordination or who was meant to be advising who,” he said.

Mr Turnbull admitted it remains to be seen whether the Syrian ceasefire will be put in jeopardy.

Speaking on Radio National this morning, the Lowy Institute’s Middle East expert Rodger Shanahan said Australia’s exact role in the bungle remained unclear.

“The language is circumspect ... it (our involvement) might be in a supporting role,” he said.

Dr Shanahan told news.com.au Australia had a range of aircraft operating in Syria but it wasn’t yet known what sort of aircraft or which country carried out the strike.

“We just don’t know until an investigation is carried out,” he said.

Dr Shanahan said the raids would have no doubt heightened tensions between Russia and coalition forces.

He said while the US isn’t going to share its intelligence with Russia, Moscow was supposed to be kept in the loop regarding targeted strikes to a degree.

But Dr Shanahan he expected Russia would use the strike against the US.

“We would expect Russia to make those comments,” he said.

“They will take any opportunity to improve their image and tarnish that of the US.”

Dr Shanahan said while the peace deal remained shaky, whether it would crumble entirely would be largely determined by what happens in northern Syria in coming days, particularly in Aleppo.

Brisbane-based observer of international relations and an associate member of RMIT University’s Centre for Global Research Nikolay Murashkin said he believed the death toll and damage resulting from the US strike speak for themselves and are stronger than trading diplomatic barbs.

However Mr Murashkin said the incident could not have come at a worse time.

“It was an extremely bad timing for an irresponsible mess-up,” he said.

While the peace deal brokered by Russia and the US was hailed as a success it also had many expectations placed upon it.

“The US bungle certainly did not help alleviating an already suspicious environment,” he said.

“Both parties are supposed to be peace brokers, they don’t have the luxury to undermine their credibility in a blatant fashion.”

‘PANDERING TO ISIS’

Hours after the coalition strike, the Pentagon admitted US-led pilots may have hit Syrian President Bashar Assad’s forces but said that they “believed they were striking a Daesh (IS) fighting position”.

It said coalition forces “would not intentionally strike a known Syrian military unit.”

Russia said it was “deeply concerned,” warning that Washington would have to reign in rebels fighting Assad “otherwise, the realisation of Russia-US agreements ... could be put in danger.” “The actions of the pilots — if they, as we hope, were not taken on orders from Washington — fall between criminal negligence and direct pandering to IS terrorists,” it said.

An emergency UN Security Council meeting called by Moscow to discuss the attack ended early on Saturday after an exchange between the US and Russia reminiscent of Cold War-era verbal jousting.

US ambassador Samantha Power said Moscow’s request for the meeting was a “stunt”, while her Russian counterpart Vitaly Churkin accused the US of violating agreements that it would not target army positions.

Mr Churkin called the strike a “bad omen” for the US-Russia deal to halt Syria’s war, which has killed more than 300,000 people since it erupted in 2011.

Iran also condemned the raid.

Iran’s official IRNA news agency on Sunday quoted Foreign Ministry spokesman Bahram Ghasemi as saying the move violated Syria’s sovereignty and “showed that terrorist groups enjoy US support in Syria.”

Iran is a close ally of Syrian President Assad, and has sent high-ranking officers and other military forces to bolster his troops.

Meanwhile, head of the terrorist group Fateh al-Sham Front, which changed its name from Al-Nusra Front after breaking ties with Al-Qaeda, said that “neither we nor rebel groups will allow the siege of Aleppo to continue”.

Abu Mohamed al-Jolani told Al-Jazeera negotiations were under way for anti-regimen groups to band together in a single organisation.

Such a merger would throw a major wrench in the US-Russia deal, which foresaw co-operation between the two world powers against jihadists, including Fateh al-Sham and IS, if the truce holds for a week

VERGE ON COLLAPSE

Saturday’s bungle has raised questions about Syria’s ceasefire after the city of Aleppo was hit by its first air raids in nearly a week.

The barrage of strikes on rebel-held districts of Aleppo risks reigniting battlefronts in the city and could be the most serious threat to the ceasefire so far.

A halt to fighting around Aleppo and the delivery of desperately needed humanitarian aid were key components of the fragile deal that took effect last Monday evening.

The ceasefire’s co-sponsors, Russia and the United States, have traded accusations over its fraying, with relations strained even further following the raid.

Syria accused the United States of seeking the failure of the ceasefire.

“The objective of this US aggression is to bring about the failure of the truce,” said Bashar Jaafari, Syria’s ambassador to the United Nations.

Sunday was the deadliest day of the truce so far, said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, with 10 civilians killed in areas where the ceasefire was supposed to have taken hold.

Russia said Aleppo was “especially tense”, blaming the instability on rebels.

“The amount of shelling by rebel groups against positions of Syrian government troops and of residential areas is increasing,” said defence ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov.

French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault accused President Assad’s government of undermining the ceasefire.

“We must not forget that it is first of all the (Syrian) regimen, and it is always the regimen, which has jeopardised the US-Russian ceasefire,” he said.

INTENTIONAL STRIKE?

The evening strikes on Aleppo killed one woman and wounded others, said the Britain-based Observatory, which could not identify who carried them out.

An AFP correspondent in Aleppo’s Karam al-Jabal district saw several wounded children after a raid.

Nine people including a child were killed Sunday when a pair of barrel bombs hit an opposition-held town in the southern province of Daraa, the Observatory said.

“Today was the highest death toll since the truce began. Ten were killed today out of 25 civilians killed in total since Monday,” said Observatory head Rami Abdel Rahman.

A senior adviser to President Assad said on Sunday that Damascus believed the strike was “intentional”.

“None of the facts on the ground show that what happened was a mistake or a coincidence,” Buthaina Shaaban told AFP.

The Observatory confirmed 80-90 soldiers were killed in the strike on a strategic hill near Deir Ezzor on Saturday. Moscow put the death toll at 62.

On Sunday, IS said it shot down a Syrian warplane near the city. State media confirmed a plane had been shot down and its pilot killed, but did not say who was responsible.

— With wires