IDLIB, Syria (AP) — Militants attacked a Russian air base in Syria, killing two soldiers, a Syrian government official and a local activist said Wednesday.
They said that the two militants who launched the attack Tuesday on the Hmeimim air base on Syria’s coast were also killed. Both spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the situation.
The Syrian official said that it was unclear whether the two people killed at the base were Russian soldiers or Syrian contractors. Russia’s ministry of defense did not respond to a request for comment. The Syrian government has given no official statement on the incident.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a UK-based war monitor, reported that at least three people were killed in the attack but that it had been unable to determine if they were attackers or Russian forces. It said the attackers were believed to be foreign fighters affiliated with the new Syrian defense forces.
The government official said the two militants who were killed were foreign nationals who had worked as military trainers at a naval college that was training members of the new government’s military. He said they had acted on their own in attacking the base and were not officially affiliated with any faction.
The new Syrian government, which has been trying to build its diplomatic ties, has been under pressure by the United States and other countries to deal with the ranks of foreign Islamist fighters who joined the armed opposition to Assad and who are often seen as having more extreme and fundamentalist views than their Syrian counterparts.
The local activist said he had heard clashes in the area around the base, including both gunfire and shelling. Videos shared on social media showed smoke rising from behind a building at the base amid the sound of gunshots.
Former Syrian President Bashar Assad, who fell in a lightning rebel offensive in December, was a close ally of Russia. Moscow’s scorched-earth intervention in support of Assad once turned the tide of Syria’s civil war, and since his ouster, he has been granted asylum in Russia.
But the former insurgents leading Syria’s transitional government since Assad’s fall have maintained relations with Moscow and have not forced a complete exit of Russian military forces from bases in Syria.
In March, when clashes between pro-Assad armed groups and the new government security forces spiraled into sectarian attacks on civilians from the Alawite religious minority to which Assad belongs, thousands of Alawite civilians took refuge in the Hmeimim base, many of whom have remained there.
On Tuesday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov publicly condemned what he called “ethnic cleansing” in Syria but did not mention the reported attack on the air base.
FILE - A Russian helicopter flies over the Hmeimim Air Base, a Syrian airbase currently operated by Russia, located southeast of the city of Latakia in the town of Hmeimim, Syria, on Monday, Dec.16, 2024. (AP Photo/Leo Correa, File)
