US protects Syria terrorists from aerial bombardment: Moscow

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has accused the United States of assisting terrorists in war-torn Syria, saying Washington is protecting the terror groups, including the Takfiri Fateh al-Sham terrorist group, formerly known as al-Nusra Front, from airstrikes.

The Russian top diplomat, as reported by Lebanon-based al-Manar television network, made the remarks on Monday, during a joint press conference with his Ethiopian counterpart, Workneh Gebeyehu, in Moscow, where they answered questions regarding combating terrorism.

Lavrov added that the US sponsorship of terrorists had recently came into light, when it was revealed that the White House helped Fateh al-Sham terrorists evade aerial bombardment conducted by Moscow and Damascus, without giving further details.

He noted that the alleged move by Washington violated all international conventions and laws, stressing the necessity of eliminating double standards and ambiguous ideas in the fight against terror groups.

Back in May, former Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, made similar comments, when he said that Washington had created the Takfiri Daesh terrorist group, another notorious terror organization active in Syria. “Daesh is a US product,” he said.

The ex-Afghan leader added that he had received regular reports of unmarked helicopters airdropping supplies to Daesh militants active on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border.

Lavrov's comments came some eight days after a US Navy F/A-18 Super Hornet shot down a Syrian SU-22, which was conducting an operation against Daesh terrorists on the outskirts of the city of Raqqah.

In two other occasions in June and May, US warplanes attacked a Syrian military position near At-Tanf, killing an unspecified number of people and causing some material damage.

Reports say that many Daesh terrorists were initially trained by the CIA in Jordan in 2012 to destabilize the Syrian government.

In August last year, US President Donald Trump, then a presidential nominee, said that then US president, Barack Obama, and former secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, together "founded" the Daesh terror group.

The US and its allies formed a so-called military coalition earlier in 2014 to fight Daesh in neighboring Iraq, but they later expanded it to include territories in east and north of Syria. Damascus, which itself is busy fighting terrorists on multiple fronts, condemned the decision at the time, saying it violated Syria’s territorial integrity.

The Syrian government has never sought assistance from the West as it insists that Washington and its European allies have helped the surge in militancy in the Arab country by providing direct finance and weaponry to certain militant groups.

Syria has been gripped by foreign-backed militancy since March 2011. In August last year, United Nations Special Envoy for Syria Staffan de Mistura estimated that over 400,000 people had been killed in the conflict up to that time.