RUSSIA’S general staff accused the US yesterday of deliberately destroying Syria’s infrastructure under the pretext of fighting Isis.

Colonel-General Sergei Rudskoi said the US-led Operation Inherent Resolve coalition was trying to “completely destroy critical infrastructure in Syria and complicate postwar reconstruction as much as possible.”

Col-Gen Rudskoi pointed out that coalition jets had destroyed four bridges over the Euphrates river and hit the 800 megawatt Tabqa hydroelectric dam to the west of Raqqa.

The collapse of the dam would cause an “ecological catastrophe” and lead to numerous civilian deaths, he said.

On Monday the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) — dominated by the Kurdish Peoples’ Protection Units — and their US military “advisers” halted their assault on the town of al-Thawrah on the south side of the dam to allow engineers to make repairs.

But the coalition claimed via Twitter: “To our knowledge, the dam has not been structurally damaged.”

Russia has targeted the Isis fleet of thousands of tanker lorries since entering the war in September 2015, the US has been reported as having bombed oil wells, bridges and the Aleppo power station under Isis control.

Russia’s air strikes on urban areas held by Isis and other rebel groups are also believed to have killed thousands of civilians, though Moscow disputes figures collated by the pro-rebel Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

SDF commander Nasser Haj Mansour said coalition planes would start using the Tabqa air base south of the dam, captured in recent days.

And Kurdish General Commander Sipan Hamo repeated the Syrian Kurd leader Salih Muslim’s assertion on Monday that the Isis stronghold of Raqqa would join a selfdeclared Kurdish state of Rojava once liberated.