The US and its allies targeted ISIS forces in 27 airstrikes in Iraq and Syria in a 24-hour period, the Combined Joint Task Force said Monday.
A statement from the task force said that in Syria the air raids, which ran from Sunday morning to Monday morning, hit ISIS units and destroyed fighting positions and buildings near the city of Ain al-Arab, while a strike near Deir al-Zor hit an oil refinery and another near the town of Al-Bukamal on the Iraqi border destroyed an excavator.
Sixteen strikes in Iraq destroyed fighting positions, vehicles, an artillery system, a rocket launcher and buildings. The targets were near the cities of Beiji, Taji, Al-Qaim, Ramadi, Tal Afar, Al-Asad, Sinjar and Mosul.
According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an activist group based in Britain, one of the strikes killed three civilians working at an oil facility near the town of Mayadin, in Deir al-Zor province.
Another airstrike, this time by Syrian regime aircraft, injured two men and a woman in another area of rural Deir al-Zor province, the Observatory said. Anti-regime activists based in Deir al-Zor also reported the strikes by both sides but did not have precise information about the casualties.
The Observatory said that ISIS has also prevented locals from approaching areas where airstrikes and clashes with regime troops have taken place, making it more difficult to obtain information.
Elsewhere, ISIS was busy sending reinforcements to rural Hassakeh province where it has been engaged in sporadic clashes with regime forces, the Observatory said. It added that airstrikes, believed to have been carried out by the international coalition, struck the area.
East of the city of Homs, ISIS militants killed at least four regime troops in fighting that lasted for hours around the Shaar natural gas field, the Observatory said, adding that the militant group suffered a “confirmed,” but unspecified, number of casualties.
In the city of Aleppo, the Observatory said several neighborhoods witnessed clashes pitting rebel groups against regime troops.
The Free Syrian Army’s Hazm Movement militia, meanwhile, claimed it destroyed a regime airplane on the tarmac of the Neirab airport, using a TOW missile.
Hazm, which posted video footage purporting to show the incident, is one of several dozen groups that have received US training and weaponry.
