Airstrikes ‘kill 39 civilians’ in ISIS bastion in Syria

A wave of airstrikes killed at least 39 civilians on Saturday in Raqa, the main stronghold of ISIS in Syria, a monitoring group said.

At least five children and seven women were among the dead in ISIS’s de facto capital in the north of the war-ravaged country, the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

Five members of ISIS’s self-styled police force were also killed and 60 people were wounded, some critically, according to the monitor, which relies on a network of sources on the ground. The raids came a day after 16 civilians were killed in strikes on the same city. “We cannot know whether the latest strikes on Raqa are by Syrian or Russian warplanes,” said Observatory director Rami Abdel Rahman.

“What is clear is that their goal is to try to paralyse IS and to stop it from deploying reinforcements from Raqa to the Palmyra area,” he told AFP.

ISIS seized Palmyra, a Unesco World Heritage Site known as the “Pearl of the Desert”, in May 2015.

In September, satellite images confirmed that Palmyra’s famed Temple of Bel had been targeted by ISIS as part of a campaign to destroy pre-Islamic monuments, tombs and statues it considers idolatrous.

Meanwhile, a captive British photojournalist has appeared in a new ISIS propaganda video purportedly from the ISIS-held city of Mosul. The latest video was released by the ISIS- Aamaq news agency on Saturday. In it, Cantlie is seen mocking US airstrikes on ISIS media kiosks. ISIS has long used Cantlie for propaganda purposes, featuring him in videos, likely speaking under duress.