Syrian regime air strikes on IS ‘capital’ kill 63

BEIRUT, Lebanon — A wave of Syrian regime air strikes on the Islamic State group’s self-proclaimed capital of Raqqa, in the country’s east, killed at least 63 people on Tuesday, among them 36 civilians, a monitor said.

“Among the 63 killed were at least 36 civilians. There were also 20 unidentified victims who could be civilians or jihadists, as well as the disfigured remains of at least seven other people,” said Observatory director Rami Abdel Rahman.

“Dozens more were wounded, some of them critically. We fear the death toll may rise further,” he told AFP.

The head of the Britain-based monitoring group said previously that “most of the casualties were caused by two consecutive air strikes” on Raqqa’s main industrial zone.

“The first strike came, residents rushed to rescue the wounded, and then the second raid took place,” said Abdel Rahman, whose group relies on a network of sources on the ground in Syria for its information.

Amateur video footage distributed by activists in Raqqa showed several bloodied bodies laid out on a street near an apparent bombing site, as an ambulance rushed to the scene.

Aid workers in red overalls bearing the Red Crescent symbol could be seen placing the corpses into white body bags.

Activists from the city meanwhile denounced the raids as a “massacre.”

The Islamic State organization emerged in Syria’s war in spring 2013. It took over Raqqa, the only provincial capital to fall from government control since the outbreak of a 2011 revolt, and turned it into its bastion.

Most of the city’s civil society activists, as well as rebel fighters who expelled President Bashar Assad’s troops, have either been killed, kidnapped or forced to flee for other parts of Syria or neighboring Turkey.

For many months, Assad’s regime only rarely targeted Raqqa city, apparently reserving most of its firepower for areas under rebel control.

But late this summer, the government intensified its air strikes against IS positions in northern and eastern Syria.

On September 6, 53 people were killed in air strikes on Raqqa, among them at least 31 civilians, according to the Observatory.

The US-led military coalition that has been carrying out air strikes against IS in Iraq and Syria has also targeted the jihadist group in Raqqa.

Activists say Raqqa’s residents fear the government’s strikes far more than those of the coalition because most of the casualties from the regime’s attacks have been civilians.