Russia asks for Beirut flights to avoid area over Mediterranean

Lebanon's transport minister Ghazi Zeaiter said on Friday that Russia had asked for flights from Beirut airport to avoid an area over the eastern Mediterranean.

Russia, which is carrying out air strikes in Syria, "has asked the Lebanese authorities that planes leaving Beirut airport towards the west avoid overflying an area in Mediterranean territorial waters because of manoeuvres on Saturday, Sunday and Monday," he said.

Zeaiter said Beirut had "reservations about the Russian request and was studying it".

Since September 30, Russia has waged a campaign of air raids and missile strikes against rebels and the jihadist Islamic State (IS) group, in support of the government forces of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

Russia on Friday fired cruise missiles from warships in the Caspian Sea at targets across Syria, Russian defence minister Sergei Shoigu was quoted as saying by Russian news agencies. 

Moscow fired 18 missiles from ships in its Caspian Sea fleet at seven targets in the Raqa, Idlib and Aleppo provinces, 

Moscow has stepped up its strikes in Syria with long-distance bombers after confirming for the first time on Tuesday that a bomb downed a Russian airliner in Egypt last month.

Shoigu told President Vladimir Putin in a briefing that cruise missile strikes against one target near the IS-controlled city of Deir Ezzor had killed "more than 600 fighters", but did not specify when the strike had taken place. 

At least eight people were killed in at least 50 air strikes in the eastern Deir Ezzor province on Friday, during which dozens of oil tankers were destroyed, Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR), a UK-based monitoring group, said. 

Russia has also doubled the number of jets it has based in government-held territory in Syria to 69 over the past few days, Shoigu said. 

The SOHR said on Friday that more than 1,300 people, around two-thirds of them combatants, have been killed in Russian air strikes in Syria since the aerial campaign began on September 30.

It said 381 IS fighters had been killed, along with 547 militants from the al-Qaeda affiliated Al-Nusra Front and other rebel forces.

The strikes also killed 403 civilians, including 97 children, according to the monitor.

The Observatory's last toll for the campaign, on October 29, put the number of killed at nearly 600.

Russia says its aerial campaign targets IS and other "terrorists" but rebel forces and their backers accuse Moscow of also focusing on moderate rebel fighters.

Several medical groups have also accused Russia of strikes that have hit field clinics and hospitals in Syria.

Russia's intervention in Syria follows that of a US-led coalition that has been carrying out strikes against IS in the country since September 2014.

According to the Observatory, the US-led strikes have killed at least 3,649 people since they began, about six percent of them civilians.

The monitor said in late October that US-led raids had killed 3,276 IS fighters, 147 members of Al-Nusra or Islamist groups and 226 civilians.