US-led strikes on IS stronghold kill dozens

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

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

In Raqqa, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said at least 30 people had been 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 air strikes tonight were executed to deny Daesh (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 Daesh’s ability to move from Raqa.”

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

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

— AFP