BEIRUT — Islamic State militants advanced
against rival insurgents in wide swaths of
Aleppo province Friday, activists and local
media said, even as Russia ramped up its
campaign to recapture rebel-held territory for
the Syrian government.
In a surprise advance — marking some of the
Islamic State’s biggest gains in recent months
— jihadists routed Syrian rebels from at least
five villages and threatened the outskirts of
Aleppo city, Syria’s second-largest city,
activists said.
Nearby, an Iranian brigadier general was killed
in outside Aleppo, Iran’s state television
reported. It was unclear, however, if the
general — a senior commander in Iran’s
powerful Revolutionary Guard — was killed in
the clashes with the militants.
The Iranian state television report said that
Brig. Gen. Hossein Hamedani was killed
Thursday in the suburbs of Aleppo while
“carrying out an advisory mission.” The Syrian
government is closely allied with Iran and
Russia, which has launched airstrikes and naval
missile attacks to aid Syrian forces.
Iran says it has military advisers in Syria, but
Lebanon’s Iranian-backed Hezbollah militia has
also come to the aid of Syrian President
Bashar al-Assad.
Ground level: On the scene of controversial
Russian strikes in Syria
 View Photos
Russia continues its military operations in
Syria.
The official Iranian IRNA news agency read a
statement by the Guard in which it blamed the
Islamic State for his death. No other details
were given.
[NATO: Russian escalating in Syria “troubling” ]
“Brig. Gen. Hamedani was martyred by Daesh
terrorists during an advisory mission in the
suburb of Aleppo” on Thursday afternoon, said
the statement read on IRNA, using the Arabic
name for the Islamic State.
Hamedani, a veteran Iranian commander who
played an important role in the Iran-Iraq war
in the early 1980s, was the second Guard
commander to be killed in Syria this year.
Iran is one of Syrian President Bashar al-
Assad’s main allies. It has backed his
embattled government for years, stepping up
its support since Syria’s brutal civil war began
four years ago.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a
monitoring group, said the surprise advance by
Islamic State militants in Aleppo province
Friday was the most significant in months.
The advances by the extremists come as
Russian warplanes have targeted U.S.-backed
rebels in Hama and Idlib provinces as part of a
broader ground offensive led by the Syrian
government against the armed opposition.
FILE - In this
undated file photo released by a militant
website, which has been verified and is
consistent with other AP reporting, militants of
the Islamic State group hold up their weapons
and wave flags as they ride in a convoy
through Raqqa city in Syria on a road leading
to Iraq. (Uncredited/AP)
Since Wednesday, Russian-backed government
troops have sought to move into territory
seized by rebels in northern and western Syria.
But so far, regime soldiers have failed to oust
the rebels from any major areas.
Syrian rebels have uploaded dozens of videos
of fighters using U.S.-supplied anti-tank
missiles to destroy armored vehicles and
defend their strongholds. The weapons appear
to have slowed the government offensive,
activists say.
Outside Syria, NATO leaders on Thursday
condemned Russia’s military intervention
there, vowing to sharpen their eastern defenses
from the Baltics to Turkey, but they stopped
short of taking concrete action to parry
Moscow’s moves in the Middle East.
At a meeting of NATO defense ministers at its
headquarters in Brussels, Secretary General
Jens Stoltenberg decried a “troubling
escalation” by Russian forces in Syria and the
use of “some of their most modern weapons”
near NATO’s borders. At the same time,
though, alliance leaders appeared to have scant
appetite for a confrontation with their long-
time adversary and limited their response to
minor or symbolic military countermeasures.
[No ‘exit ramp’ for Putin]
Meanwhile, Russia intensified its attacks on
Syrian rebels.
The Russian Defense Ministry said its warships
in the Caspian Sea fired four more cruise
missiles at Islamic State targets from nearly
1,000 miles away, a potent exhibition of
Moscow’s firepower.
Also Thursday, Russian warplanes continued to
back Syrian troops and allied militias in a
campaign to reclaim territory in western Syria
from various rebel factions opposing Moscow’s
ally, Assad. The targeted groups include various
Western-backed fighters.
In an echo of the U.S. government’s response
to another Russian military intervention last
year, when Moscow helped spark a civil war in
Ukraine and annexed Crimea, U.S. Defense
Secretary Ashton B. Carter warned Russia that
it risked being shunned by the rest of the
world but suggested that external pressure
could go only so far.
“Russia has continued to wrap itself in a
shroud of isolation, and only the Kremlin can
decide to change that,” Carter told reporters in
Brussels. “It remains our hope that Russia will
see that tethering itself to a sinking ship is a
losing strategy.”
Shortly after Carter spoke, reports surfaced
that Russian missile attacks had gone badly
awry.
A senior U.S. defense official who spoke on the
condition of anonymity said the Pentagon had
tracked Russian cruise missiles, fired from
ships in the Caspian Sea, that had crashed in
Iranian territory. It was unclear whether there
were any casualties. Officials in Moscow and
Tehran did not immediately respond to the
reports.
Backed by Russia, the Syrian government
expanded its offensive Thursday from Hama
and Idlib provinces in the northwest toward
the Mediterranean coast near Latakia, a
stronghold of Assad’s Alawite sect, and the
Ghab plain.
[Syrian forces begin ground offensive backed
by Russian air and sea power
]
As the fighting continued, NATO leaders sought
to reassure Turkey that the alliance would take
any necessary steps to help defend Turkish
territory from a Syrian spillover. Russian
fighter jets have violated Turkish airspace on at
least two occasions in the past week,
prompting protests from Ankara and Brussels.
NATO also finalized long-standing plans to
expand a joint-response force to 40,000
troops, double the current number. It also
said it would establish small regional
headquarters in Hungary and Slovakia, adding
to six other new headquarters operations in
Eastern European countries.
Those plans have accelerated since Russia
seized control of Crimea and began supporting
separatist rebels in eastern Ukraine last year.
Deane reported from London.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/islamic-state-advances-over-wide-swathes-of-aleppo-activists-report/2015/10/09/4ed462d2-6de9-11e5-91eb-27ad15c2b723_story.html

Why are these ISIS so powerful. It appears they are not fighting alone.

These are all lies from American puppet news outlets!

They trying to media-fight russia and coarse them into believing their campaign is in futility. But the Russians are smarter than that!