60 dead in US-led air strikes on ISIS prison

Beirut, June 27: US-led coalition air strikes killed nearly 60 people at a Syrian prison run by ISIS, a monitor said on Tuesday as Washington insisted the jihadists remain its only target.

Monday’s strikes hit an ISIS-run jail in Syria’s Mayadeen at dawn, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based war monitor.

Observatory chief Rami Abdel Rahman told AFP that the strikes killed 42 prisoners and 15 jihadists in Mayadeen, a large town in the eastern province of Deir Ezzor.

Most of Deir Ezzor province is controlled by the jihadists and it has been the target of air strikes by both the coalition and the Syrian army and its Russian ally.

The US-led coalition said last week that it had killed ISIS’ top cleric Turki Binali in a May 31 strike on Mayadeen.

The jihadists, who seized control of large parts of Syria and Iraq three years ago, are under pressure in both countries.

US-backed forces are pushing to oust them from their last major urban strongholds, Raqa in Syria and Mosul in Iraq. But Washington’s involvement in Syria has also become increasingly complex.