PARIS - Russian air strikes in Syria will last for three to four months and will intensify, a senior Russian lawmaker said Friday as President Vladimir Putin was due in Paris for talks.
A video grab made on October 1, 2015, shows an image taken from footage made available on the Russian Defence Ministry's official website, purporting to show an airstrike in Syria
"There is always a risk of getting bogged down but in Moscow they're talking about three to four months of operations," Alexei Pushkov, the head of the foreign affairs committee of Russia's lower house of parliament, told France's Europe 1 radio.
Citing witnesses a monitoring group said Friday two children were among at least seven civilians killed in air strikes carried out by Russian warplanes in Syria's northwestern province of Idlib.
Four civilians, including a child and a woman, were killed air strikes in the district of Jabal al-Zawiya, in an area under the control of Al-Qaeda's affiliate in Syria and other Islamist rebel groups, said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
"Three other civilians, including a girl and a woman, were killed in bombing by these planes of the village of Habeet," in the same province that borders Turkey, said the group, which relies on a network of sources on the ground for its information.