The head of the Defence and Security Committee of the Russian Federation Council, Viktor Bondarev, said that the number of Russian military officers’ deaths in Syria had reached 112 since the launch of Russian operations in this country.

This announcement came during a press statement by Bondarev, on Sunday, on the occasion of three years of Russian military intervention in Syria.

Bondarev said that the human losses of his country’s forces in Syria amounted to 112 soldiers, and that about half of them were killed by the crash of the “AN-26” aircraft and the targeting of the “EL-20” aircraft.

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He also pointed out that the Russian forces also lost eight planes, seven helicopters and some armoured vehicles.

Bondarev stressed that during the first three years, the losses of the Soviet Union in Afghanistan amounted to 4,800 soldiers, at least 60 tanks, 400 armoured vehicles, 15 aircraft and 97 helicopters. In March, a Russian “AN-26” transport aircraft crashed for technical reasons at the Hmeimim Air Base in Lattakia Governorate, west of Syria.

The incident killed 39 Russian military officers on board.

On September 17, the Syrian regime’s missile systems dropped the Russian EL-20 reconnaissance aircraft in the Mediterranean, killing 15 Russian military officers.

Russia launched its first airstrikes in Syria on September 30, 2015, in its most significant intervention in the Middle East for decades.

These strikes provided cover for Bashar Al-Assad’s regime and Iranian-backed Shiite armed groups in the face of the Syrian opposition.