The Syrian air force carried out more than 200 airstrikes around the country in the past 36 hours, an anti-regime group monitoring the war said Tuesday, a rapid increase in government raids as U.S.-led forces bomb jihadist insurgents elsewhere.
Meanwhile, a U.S.-backed rebel group claimed it destroyed two warplanes on the tarmac of Aleppo International Airport.
The intensified strikes by President Bashar Assad’s forces will add to the fear among his opponents that the government is taking advantage of the U.S. raids on ISIS to attack other foes, including opposition groups that Washington backs.
Analysts say the increase could be because the Syrian military wants to weaken rebel groups before they obtain training and equipment promised by the United States.
Since midnight Sunday, the regime carried out at least 210 raids, including barrel bombings, on provinces in the east, north and west of the country, the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.
In the southern province of Deraa, an anti-regime activist group said “at least” 15 raids killed 15 people in the border village of Nasib, while at least five members of a single family were killed by an airstrike and four barrel bombs dropped on the town of Yadouda.
The Observatory said that 20 people were killed throughout the province Tuesday – two rebels in clashes with government forces and the rest civilians in a series of airstrikes. The slight discrepancies in casualty figures are common.
The strikes on Nasib, just north of the Jordanian border, came after rebels claimed to have defeated regime troops further north, in the town of Umm al-Mayadhen, following up on recent gains in the province.
Activist groups posted a number of videos to YouTube showing footage from the checkpoint, which was seized after four days of clashes.
The day’s air raids struck areas in the Hama, Deraa, Idlib, Aleppo and Qunaitra provinces as well as the Damascus countryside, the Observatory said. They also hit the eastern Deir al-Zor province where U.S.-led forces have also been bombing ISIS positions, the Observatory added.
Before the surge in Syrian air force raids, the military had carried out 12-20 raids a day, the Observatory said.Damascus has not raised objections to the U.S. bombing of ISIS, which is mainly based in the east and north of the country, far from the most populous areas near Damascus and the Mediterranean coast.
The United States says it does not want to help Assad’s government despite bombing ISIS, an Al-Qaeda offshoot that has become one of the most powerful insurgent groups in the more than 3-year-old conflict.
In Aleppo, the U.S.-backed Hazm Movement, which is part of the rebel Free Syrian Army, posted video footage of what it said were fighters destroying two regime aircraft at the city’s airport.
In the footage, a fighter is seen firing a TOW anti-tank missile to score a direct hit on a MiG and said a nearby airplane was later engulfed in flames as a result of the attack. The Hazm Movement is one of a number of groups that have received U.S. arms and training in recent months, and prior to the formation of an international coalition to battle ISIS.
