Moscow demands Washington investigate following airstrike on Syrian army

Russia has demanded the United States conduct a full investigation into US-led airstrikes carried out against the Syrian army which led to the death of at least 60 soldiers.

In a statement, the Russian Foreign Ministry expressed its concern over the US air raids and demanded, what they described as, their American partners to conduct a full investigation and consider strict measures to avoid the recurrence of such an event.

“The actions of coalition pilots – if they, as we hope, were not taken on an order from Washington – are on the boundary between criminal negligence and connivance with Islamic State terrorists,” the ministry stressed in a statement.

The US-led coalition acknowledged on Saturday that they were striking what they believed to be a Daesh operation before halting the strikes after being informed by Russian officials that it was a Syrian army base.

The US Ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power expressed Washington’s regrets for what she described as unintentional airstrikes.

The Russian Ambassador to the UN Vitaly Churkin accused the United States of violating its commitment of not exposing any of the Syrian force operation bases; he believed the incident as a collapse of the US-Russian truce in Syria.