US-led coalition said to kill 3,000 jihadists in 10 months
Monitor says international airstrikes led to deaths of 172 civilians in Syria, including 53 kids
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The US-led coalition has killed over 3,000 Islamic State and Al-Nusra Front fighters in Syria in the past ten months, the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said Thursday.
The airstrikes also exacted 172 civilian casualties, the monitor said, including 53 children and 35 women.
Since September 23, 2014, some 2,927 IS fighters — most of them non-Syrian — and 115 Al Nusra fighters were killed, the monitor said.
Hundreds of others were wounded in the raids, the “vast majority IS extremists,” it said.
The monitor noted that the number of Islamic State casualties was likely higher than this tally, “due to IS concealment on its casualties, and because there is information about 200 other IS militants at least killed the airstrikes.”
After initially expanding in the wake of its proclamation of a “caliphate” over parts of Iraq and Syria last summer, the group led by Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi has seen the internationally supported Iraqi fightback roll back its borders.
The jihadists are also under pressure in Syria, where they have lost several key areas along the border with Turkey.
Observers have warned that as military pressure on IS mounts in the battlefield, the group risks reverting to its old tactics of hit-and-run attacks and car bombs.
At least 230,000 people have been killed in Syria’s multi-front conflict, which began in 2011 with anti-government protests but devolved into a civil war.
The Times of Israel Community.