MOSCOW (Sputnik) – Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said she hopes that US President Barack Obama’s statement of carrying out “surgical strikes” against the Islamic State (known as Daesh in the Arab world and prohibited in Russia and other countries) would not simply “surgically change the face” of the terrorist organization.
“Obama announced the necessity to carry out ‘surgical strikes’ against ISIL. The most important thing is that in Washington’s understanding of this, it must not be plastic surgery that instead of solving the problem, only changes the face,” Zakharova said on her Facebook account.
The US-led coalition, comprising some 60 states, has been bombing Daesh positions in Syria without the approval of either UN Security Council or Damascus since 2014. The coalition is also conducting airstrikes in Iraq. In September, Assad said that the territories seized by Daesh had expanded, and the number of insurgents had increased since the beginning of the Washington-led campaign.
