30 civilians dead in anti-IS strikes in Syria, monitor says

At least 30 civilians are killed in separate bombing raids by the US-led coalition and pro-regime warplanes on jihadist-held territory in Syria, a monitor says.

Fifteen of the victims die in coalition airstrikes on a village near the Islamic State group’s stronghold of Raqqa, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

“The strikes this morning hit the village of Zur Shammar, about 30 kilometers (20 miles) from Raaqa on the southern banks of the Euphrates River,” says Observatory head Rami Abdel Rahman.

“The victims included three children and four women,” he adds.

To the southeast, suspected Russian airstrikes kill another 15 civilians — mostly children — in an IS-held village in the Deir Ezzor province, the Observatory says.

The dead were two families, Abdel Rahman says, “a man, his two wives, and their seven children, and a second family of two parents and three children.”

— AFP