British airstrikes against the terrorist Islamic State (IS) will not defeat that militant group, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad said today.
"They won't be successful. You can't cut off part of the cancer. It will only accelerate its spread in the body. You have to take it out," Assad said in an interview with "The Sunday Times", as reported by Reuters.
The Syrian president scoffed at British Prime Minister David Cameron's assessment that there are 70.000 Western-backed opposition fighters in Syria.
They could, Cameron said, begin a political solution to the civil war and could win territory from jihadists who have been weakened by airstrikes.
"It's a new episode in a long series of Cameron's classic farce ... where are they? Where are the 70.000 moderate fighters he's talking about? There aren't 70.000. There aren't even 7.000," Assad said.
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