At least 30 dead in US-led raids on IS’ Syria stronghold

This was one of the largest deliberate engagements we have conducted to date in Syria and it will have debilitating e ects on IS ability to move from raqa.

BEIRUT: A US-led coalition has carried out some of its heaviest airstrikes yet on the Islamic State group’s de facto Syrian capital, killing over 30 people, including six civilians.

The strikes on Saturday night and Sunday morning also damaged infrastructure in Raqa city, the group’s bastion in northern Syria.

Elsewhere, regime forces backed by Lebanon’s Hezbollah advanced on the last rebel-held town in the Qalamun region by the Lebanese border.

Fighting also continued between government troops and two rebel coalitions seeking to capture territory from the regime in northern Aleppo city.

In Raqa, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said at least 30 were killed in US-led coalition strikes late Saturday and early Sunday.

The dead included six civilians, among them a child, but the rest were IS fighters, the Britain-based monitor said.

The US-led coalition said the strikes were some of its heaviest since it began carrying out raids against IS in Syria last September.

“The significant airstrikes tonight were executed to deny IS the ability to move military capabilities throughout Syria and into Iraq,” spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Gilleran said in a coalition statement.

“This was one of the largest deliberate engagements we have conducted to date in Syria and it will have debilitating effects on IS’ ability to move from Raqa.”

Coalition forces “successfully engaged multiple targets” in Raqa, the statement said, destroying IS structures and transit routes.

The strikes “have severely constricted terrorist freedom of movement,” it added.

The raids came after IS released a video on Saturday showing the execution of 25 Syrian soldiers in the ancient amphitheatre in the city of Palmyra.

The soldiers were shot in the head by boys and teenagers in military uniforms, with a large IS flag hung behind them on the amphitheatre’s stage.

Palmyra’s ancient ruins are listed as a Unesco World Heritage Site and there has been concern that IS might seek to destroy the city’s heritage, as it has done elsewhere in Syria and Iraq.

In Syria’s Qalamun region, regime forces backed by Lebanese Hezbollah movement fighters advanced against rebels in an operation to capture the town of Zabadani.

The town was one of the first to fall to the opposition in 2012 and is now the last major town in Qalamun still in rebel hands. — AFP

Thomas Gilleran