(MENAFN- The Peninsula) Saudi Foreign Minister Adel Al Jubeir will visit Moscow on Tuesday to discuss Syria conflict and the Islamic State (IS) group with his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov, the Russian foreign ministry said yesterday.
The two ministers last met in Qatar on August 3 when Lavrov, Jubeir and US Secretary of State John Kerry held a three-way meeting, with the situation in Syria topping the agenda.
The ministers will continue "a discussion on ways to resolve the crisis in Syria," the Russian foreign ministry said.
Moscow said topics would include the "sharp growth in strength of various extremist groups, primarily the so-called Islamic State".
"The ministers will discuss the possibility of Russia-Saudi cooperation in fighting terrorism, which is in the interests of both countries," the ministry said.
It said they would discuss Russia's proposal to create a "broad international coalition to fight the IS gunmen inside Syria."
Moscow said the ministers would also pay "great attention" to the conflict in Yemen where a military coalition led by Saudi Arabia is fighting Iran-backed Huthi rebels and discuss strategies for a "speedy resolution".
Meanwhile, rocket fire from rebel-held areas around the Syrian capital killed five people and wounded 37 yesterday, state news agency Sana reported.
"Five dead and 37 wounded in a terrorist rocket attack on Baghdad Street and Ath-Thawra Street in Damascus and on the city's Bab Touma area," the agency said.
Britain-based monitor the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which gathers information from a large network of sources on the ground, confirmed the death toll.
It also said a large number of people were critically wounded.
Sana said the five were killed and 36 wounded in "Ath-Thawra Street in central Damascus by a rocket fired by terrorists in the Jubar sector", a city suburb.
It also reported one wounded when a rocket hit Baghdad Street, while five rockets that hit the Bab Touma area caused only damage.
Rebel groups took the strategic Jubar district in summer 2013, and loyalist forces began an offensive aimed at retaking it last September.
Residential districts of Damascus come under regular rebel rocket attack, while rebel-held sectors are often the target of regime air raids and artillery bombardment.
On June 17, rockets fired by rebels at central Damascus killed nine people, and on June 28 four people died in a similar attack on the city centre.
According to a toll compiled by the Observatory, the Syria conflict has killed more than 240,000 people.
It was triggered in March 2011 by the bloody repression of peaceful anti-government protests and degenerated into armed revolt and a bloody and devastating civil war.
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