A source close to the Syrian government told Reuters news agency that the Islamic State fighters killed at least 25 people, while Syria’s state news agency Sana, quoting residents, said as many as “300 civilians” were killed in the onslaught.
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The state-run SANA news organisation stated that most of those downed in all day long assaults on Deir el-Zour Saturday were senior folks, adult female* and youngsters.
It denounced the deaths as a “massacre”.
Raqa, the self-declared capital of Daesh, has come under frequent air strikes by the US-led coalition, the Syrian air force and Russian warplanes.
The killings are some of the worst carried out by the extremist group, which controls large parts of Syria and Iraq and has killed thousands of people in both countries.
A government grain reserve and a very small patch of government-controlled land can continue to provide grain for two main functioning bakeries for “many months”, but a lack of fuel and yeast has boosted black market bread prices to eight times the price in the capital, Damascus.
On Sunday, it reported that the group expanded its control of areas west and northwest of Deir el-Zour, adding that around 110 Syrian government forces were killed and at least five others captured.
“Legal and moral responsibility for this barbaric and cowardly massacre… lies on the shoulders of all the states that support terrorism and that fund and arm Takfiri groups”, said Syrian Prime Minister Wael al-Halaqi.
The Observatory for Human rights stated the jihadist team had advanced in to the city’s upper idea and grabbed Al’s suburb -Baghaliyeh.
On Saturday, at least 16 IS fighters were killed in a failed attack on a government position in Aleppo province, where loyalist troops and pro-regime fighters have been advancing towards the group’s stronghold of Al-Bab.
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More than 260,000 people have been killed in Syria since the conflict began in March 2011 with anti-government protests.
