BEIRUT // Russia's foreign ministry said on Sunday the air strikes by a US-led coalition on Syrian army forces threatened the implementation of a US ceasefire plan for Syria and urged Washington to thoroughly investigate the accident.
Syrian troops counterattacked against the ISIL extremist group around a key eastern airbase on Sunday after the coalition air strike killed dozens of soldiers forcing a retreat, military sources said.
The Syrian Observatosry for Human Rights aid 90 soldiers were killed in Saturday's air strike, sharply higher than the death toll of 62 given by Moscow.
The Pentagon said coalition pilots had believed they were hitting ISIL and had halted the raid as soon as Damascus ally Moscow informed commanders that army positions were coming under attack.
Damascus reacted angrily to the deadly strike, which forced troops to pull back from two strategic hilltops overlooking the besieged airbase on the outskirts of the city of Deir Ezzor.
"The Syrian army has returned to the offensive," a military source said on Sunday.
"After the American raids, it withdrew from several positions but now it has gone back on the attack."
A second military source inside Deir Ezzor airbase said that troops had already regained some of the lost ground.
"The army has retaken most of its positions on Jabal Therdeh with Russian and Syrian air support," the source said, referring to one of the two hills lost on Saturday.
"The two countries' air forces bombed the area around the airbase, neighbourhoods held by the jihadists and the road linking Deir Ezzor to Mayadeen," an ISIL-held town 45 kilometres to the south-east, the source added. The Observatory said at least 30 extremists were killed in Sunday's counterattack by the army.
Retaking the heights around the airbase is vital for the army as control of them would allow ISIL to fire on all aircraft trying to take off or land.
On Sunday, ISIL-affiliated news agency Amaq claimed the extremists had shot down a Syrian military plane in the eastern Syrian city of Deir Ezzor.
"A Syrian warplane belonging to the Syrian regime was brought down when targeted by fighters from the Islamic State in the city of Deir Deir Ezzor," Amaq said.
The Observatory, which monitors the Syrian conflict now in its sixth year, said the pilot of the MiG Syrian warplane was killed.
It said the plane came down in the Jabal Therdeh area which overlooks the government's Deir Ezzor military airport.
The airbase and adjacent government-held neighbourhoods of the Deir Ezzor city have been under siege since 2012 and have been dependent on resupply by air.
US ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power said the US is investigating the incident and expressed regret over the loss of life. But she accused Russia of pulling "a stunt" that is "uniquely cynical and hypocritical" in calling for the emergency meeting, while never taking similar action to condemn the Assad regime "for some of the most systematic atrocities we have seen in a generation".
Russian ambassador Vitaly Churkin walked out of the Security Council meeting before Ms Power spoke to the council, saying that in his decades as a diplomat he had "never seen such an extraordinary display of American heavy-handedness as we are witnessing today" and was "appalled" by Ms Power's remarks.
Mr Churkin said the US air strike put "a very big question mark" over the future of the ceasefire agreement and its timing is "frankly suspicious" because it comes just two days before the US and Russia are supposed to implement an agreement on military coordination in Syria.
* Reuters, Agence France-Presse and Associated Press
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