U.S. forces and their allies staged nearly 40 airstrikes on Daesh targets in Iraq and Syria over the past two days, as Syrian regime aircraft were blamed for killing more than 50 people, most of them civilians, in airstrikes on two Daesh-held towns.
Coalition fighters, bombers and remotely controlled aircraft hit 19 targets in Syria while 20 strikes were carried out in Iraq, a statement by the Combined Joint Task Force said Friday. In Syria, 17 strikes were concentrated on an area near the border town of Ain al-Arab and destroyed several Daesh buildings, vehicles and fighting positions.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based, anti-regime monitoring group, said Kurdish forces defending the city, known widely as Kobani in Kurdish, made gains against Daesh militants in fierce clashes as three coalition airstrikes struck the jihadis’ positions.
Two airstrikes near Hassakeh and one near Raqqa also caused damage, the task force said.
In Iraq, the strikes hit near Al-Asad, Sinjar, Mosul, Al-Qaim, Beiji, Kirkuk, Fallujah and Tal Afar, the statement said.
There was no word on casualties from the strikes, but the Observatory said coalition airstrikes in the area of Raqqa on Wednesday killed at least 40 Daesh militants and a number of family members, when the strikes hit a housing area and a center for making explosive devices.
On the road linking Ain al-Arab to Aleppo, two days of airstrikes by Syrian regime aircraft killed at least 53 people, including seven children, in the town of Al-Bab and the neighboring village of Qabbasin.
Activists uploaded video of the strikes’ aftermaths to social networks. An earlier toll was given as 37 fatalities, and dozens of people were seriously wounded in the strikes.
Helicopters dropped crude “barrel bombs” on residential and industrial areas, locals said.
“People were going about scraping a living and there were no armed groups in the market, only poor people. Why is Assad killing us? May God bring vengeance on him,” said Youssef al-Saadi, a resident of Qabbasin and a volunteer with the local civil defense group who was contacted on Skype.
Syrian state media did not report the strikes on Al-Bab, a city of around 100,000 people that has been a target of heavy government strikes since the start of U.S-led military campaign against Daesh in Syria in late September.
North of Aleppo, a coalition of rebel groups made gains against regime forces positions in the strategic area of Handarat, the Observatory said. The regime has been trying to seize territory to close off the principal rebel supply line from Turkey.
Another 11 airstrikes pounded rebel-held areas in next-door Idlib province, the Observatory said.
It added that there had been an increase in air raids by the Syrian military across rebel-held areas over the last three days.
The Observatory said at least 110 civilians had been killed in more than 470 airstrikes on rebel held areas in Syria in the last 72 hours, including towns in insurgent-held eastern suburbs of the capital Damascus, where the army has stepped up a 2-year-old campaign to retake the area.
Eleven civilians, mostly women and children, were killed by loyalist snipers when they were trying to leave Zibdine, a besieged rebel-held area in the rural outskirts of Damascus, the Observatory said.
“There have been unprecedented air raids across Syria in the last three days where the regime seeks to make gains on the ground to improve its negotiating stance in future political talks,” Observatory head Rami Abdel-Rahman said.
