Moscow, SANA – The Russian Air Force destroyed 415 targets for terrorists in Syria over the past three days, the Commander of the Russian grouping of forces in Syria Colonel General Sergey Surovikin said on Friday.

“To support the offensive by units of Syria’s Armed Forces, the Russian aviation every day carries out some 60 sorties…Only over the past three days, Russian pilots have made 163 sorties, destroying 415 targets,” Surovikin said at the Army-2017 international military and technical forum during a roundtable discussion on Russian participation in the war on terror in Syria.

“The enemy has lost a total of over 8,000 gunmen and 1,500 pieces of armament, military and other hardware,” he added.

“The main routes of supplying gunmen with weapons and ammunition have been blocked. Terrorist organizations have been deprived of financial support from illegal sales of oil products,” Chief of the Main Operations Department of the Russian General Staff Lieutenant General Sergey Rudskoy said, speaking about the role of Russian airstrikes.

“Special operations forces play an important role in destroying armed groups. They perform tasks of destroying leaders of terrorists, eliminating critical facilities of the enemy and adjusting strikes of our aviation,” Rudskoy added.

For his part, chief of the Russian General Staff’s Main Directorate Col. Gen. Igor Korobov affirmed that “the total number of al-Nusra Front militants in northwestern Idleb stands at 9,000 people. Currently, terrorists are trying to take control over the whole of its territory by intensifying combat actions against the moderate opposition groups.”

M.al-Frieh/H. Said