US-led coalition forces said they carried out a series of 16 airstrikes yesterday on the Islamic State in its Syrian stronghold of Raqa, in one of the biggest assaults on the extremists.
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IS said at least 10 people were killed and many others wounded.
A Raqqa-based anti-Isis network said eight civilians including a 10-year-old child had been killed.
The US-led coalition said the strikes were some of its heaviest since it began carrying out raids against Isis in Syria last September.
Gilleran, the spokesperson for the Combined Joint Task Force’s Operation Inherent Resolve, also called it one of the “largest deliberate engagements” executed in Syria to-date.
Coalition forces “successfully engaged multiple targets” throughout Raqqa, the statement said, destroying Isis structures and transit routes.
The coalition, comprising more than 60 countries, said in a statement that the 16 air strikes “severely constricted terrorist freedom of movement”.
The Associated Press reported in May that scores of Syrian troops and state employees were killed in the days after the Islamic State group captured the town on May 27.
The soldiers were shot in the head by boys and teenagers in military uniforms, with a large IS flag hung behind them on the amphitheater’s stage.
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The capturing of Palmyra in May sparked outcries from the global community, afraid that the UNESCO World Heritage Site may be the next victim of the group’s practice of destroying ancient sites, as it did in Mosul, Nimrud, Hatra and Khorsabad. The predominantly Kurdish city was split between government forces and Kurdish fighters, who have been fighting the IS group separately.
