VIDEO-Putin: Russia ready to respond to terrorist threat | Reuters.com

Russian president Vladimir Putin says Moscow is ready to respond to ''terror'' threats from Syria, while officials say they have no information about reported Russian casualties in the country. Deborah Lutterbeck reports.

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Russian warplanes on the attack in Aleppo. The video cannot be independently verified, but Russian president Vladimir Putin says his country's show of force is sending a message to the world. (SOUNDBITE) (Russian) RUSSIAN PRESIDENT, VLADIMIR PUTIN, SAYING: "As a result of the operation it has been confirmed that Russia is ready to adequately and effectively respond to the terrorist threat and any other threats to our country." Putin has justified Moscow's intervention by stating that extremists in Syria will eventually threaten Russia too, if they're not eliminated. But it doesn't come without a cost. The Russian embassy in Damascus says it has no information about reports that three Russians had been killed fighting alongside Syrian government forces. The RIA news service quoting the embassy said, "There is no information about the alleged 'deaths of three Russians' or 'three Russian servicemen' in Syria, as reported by Reuters." The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights says Russian air strikes in Syria have killed 370 people, one third of them civilians. It says the overall death toll in Syria after four years of civil war stands at more than 300,000.

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