British airstrikes on ISIS will fail to defeat the militant group, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad said in an interview with the Sunday Times newspaper, mocking Prime Minister David Cameron’s strateg
British airstrikes on ISIS will fail to defeat the militant group, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad said in an interview with the Sunday Times newspaper, mocking Prime Minister David Cameron’s strategy in the region.
Speaking in an interview conducted before the vote in Parliament, the result of which had been widely anticipated, Mr Assad said Mr Cameron’s strategy would make the situation worse, not better. “They are going to fail again,” he said. “You cannot cut out part of the cancer. You have to extract it. This kind of operation is like cutting out part of the cancer. That will make it spread in the body faster.”
Mr Assad ridiculed Mr Cameron’s assertion that there are as many as 70,000 Western-backed Opposition fighters in Syria who would open a political solution to the civil war and could retake territory from jihadists weakened by the air strikes.
“This is a new episode in a long series of David Cameron’s classical farce ... where are they Where are the 70,000 moderates he is talking about There is no 70,000. There is no 7,000.” he said.
In Syria, British bombers made their second round of strikes on ISIS targets late on Friday, again hitting oil fields, British defence minister Michael Fallon said on Saturday.
“Last night we saw the Typhoons in action for the first time, successfully hitting an oil field, oil well heads in eastern Syria out in the Omar field,” Mr Fallon said.
The Typhoon fighter bombers had only arrived at Britain’s airbase in Akrotiri, Cyprus on Thursday.
The ISIS, meanwhile, threatened Britain with suicide bombings in a new video. “The revenge has started and the blood will flow. France was the beginning,” warns the propaganda video released on Wednesday, the day British MPs voted to extend airstrikes to Syria.
Meanwhile, at least 32 ISIS fighters were killed on Sunday in apparent US-led coalition raids on Syria.
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitor said at least 32 fighters had been killed in some 15 strikes on the group’s stronghold of Raqa province in northern Syria.
A top advisor to Iran’s Supreme Leader, meanwhile, on Sunday said the future of Mr Assad could only be determined by the Syrian people and this was a “red line” for Tehran.
