Russia says ceasefire at risk after US bombing of Syrian troops

Russia has warned there is a “very big question mark” over a precarious ceasefire in Syria less than a week old after the US bombing of Syrian army positions in the east of the country.

The US has offered condolences and insisted that the airstrikes were a mistake. It said it had targeted Tharda mountain where a Syrian government offensive was seeking to capture Isis positions overlooking the Deir ez-Zour military airport. It said it would carry out an investigation.

Russia’s military said it was told by the Syrian army that at least 62 soldiers had been killed in the Deir ez-Zour air raid and more than 100 wounded. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said at least 90 soldiers were killed in the strike.

An Australian defence department statement said its jets, part of the US-led anti-Isis coalition, had targeted what had been thought to be Islamic State (Isis) fighters. “Overnight, coalition aircraft were conducting airstrikes in eastern Syria against what was believed to be a Daesh [Isis] fighting position that the coalition had been tracking for some time,” the statement said.

“However, shortly after the bombing commenced, Russian officials advised the Combined Air Operations Centre that the targets may have been Syrian military personnel.”

“While Syria remains a dynamic and complex operating environment, Australia would never intentionally target a known Syrian military unit or actively support Daesh,” the statement said, offering condolences to the families of the dead and pledging to cooperate with the US inquiry.

Russia’s foreign ministry said in a strongly worded statement that the strikes were “on the boundary between criminal negligence and direct connivance with Islamic State terrorists”.

It said the incident was a result of Washington’s “stubborn refusal” to cooperate with Moscow in fighting Isis, the Nusra Front - now renamed Jabhat Fatah al Sham - and “other terrorist groups”.

Damascus claimed it had succeeded in taking Tharda despite the US bombing, and rejected Washington’s insistence that it had hit Syrian troops in error. A foreign ministry statement said that Syrian positions had been repeatedly attacked in strikes that were “on purpose and planned in advance”.

The US and Russia on Saturday clashed at the United Nations over the bombing when the US ambassador to the UN, Samantha Power, described Russia’s call for an emergency closed-door security council meeting over the incident a “stunt” that was “uniquely cynical and hypocritical”. She said Russia had for years blocked UN punitive measures against the Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad for the barrel bombing of civilian populations in rebel-held cities.

“Since 2011, the Assad regime has been intentionally striking civilian targets with horrifying, predictable regularity ... And yet in the face of none of these atrocities has Russia expressed outrage, nor has it demanded investigations, nor has it ever called for a Saturday night emergency consultation in the Security Council,” she said.

After the meeting went ahead, the Russian envoy to the UN, Vitaly Churkin, declared that in his decades as a diplomat he had “never seen such an extraordinary display of American heavy-handedness as we are witnessing today” after the meeting went ahead.

He said that if Power’s actions were any indication of Washington’s possible reaction then the cease-fire agreement is “in serious trouble” but expressed hope the US would convince Moscow it was serious about finding a political solution in Syria and fighting terrorism.

Churkin said the timing of the US airstrike was “frankly suspicious” as it came two days before the US and Russia were supposed under the ceasefire agreement to begin joint planning for air operations against Isis and the former Nusra front, Jabhat Fatah al-Sham, deemed to be terrorist groups by both states.

“We are still gathering information at this time but we have been able to confirm that earlier today, the United States struck what we believe to be an ISIL target,” Power said, using an alternative acronym for the Islamic State.

“We halted the attack when we were informed by Russia that it was possible that we were striking Syrian regime military personnel and vehicles.”