AFP/Beirut
A string of Syrian regime air strikes on the Islamic State group’s self-proclaimed capital Raqa yesterday killed at least 63 people, more than half of them civilians, a monitor said.
The air strikes were the deadliest by President Bashar al-Assad’s air force against Raqa since IS seized control of the city last year.
“Among the 63 killed were at least 36 civilians,” said Rami Abdel Rahman of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
“There were also 20 unidentified victims who could be civilians or jihadists, as well as the disfigured remains of at least seven other people,” he said.
The director of the Britain-based monitoring group said previously that “most of the casualties were caused by two consecutive air strikes” on Raqa’s main industrial zone.
“The first strike came, residents rushed to rescue the wounded, and then the second raid took place,” Abdel Rahman, whose group relies on a network of sources on the ground in Syria for its information, said.
Amateur video footage distributed by activists in Raqa showed several bloodied bodies laid out on a street near an apparent bombing site, as an ambulance rushed to the scene.
Aid workers in red overalls bearing the Red Crescent symbol could be seen placing the corpses into white body bags.
Activists from the city meanwhile denounced the raids as a “massacre”.
The Islamic State organisation emerged in Syria’s war in spring 2013.
It took over Raqa, the only provincial capital to fall from government control since the outbreak of a 2011 revolt, and turned it into its bastion.
Most of the city’s civil society activists, as well as rebel fighters who expelled Assad’s troops, have either been killed, kidnapped or forced to flee for other parts of Syria or neighbouring Turkey.
For many months, Assad’s regime only rarely targeted Raqa city, apparently reserving most of its firepower for areas under rebel control.
But late this summer, the government intensified its air strikes against IS positions in northern and eastern Syria.
On September 6, 53 people were killed in air strikes on Raqa, among them at least 31 civilians, according to the Observatory.
The US-led military coalition that has been carrying out air strikes against IS in Iraq and Syria has also targeted the militant group in Raqa.
Activists say Raqa’s residents fear the government’s strikes far more than those of the coalition because most of the casualties from the regime’s attacks have been civilians.
Strategically located on the river Euphrates near the border with Turkey, Raqa had a pre-war population of about 220,000 but it is now home to 300,000-350,000 people, including many displaced by the conflict, according to the Observatory.
French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said yesterday Paris is pushing for “safe zones” to be set up in Syria where citizens would be out of reach of regime forces and IS militants.
Fabius said the country was working alongside UN envoy Staffan de Mistura who has proposed a “freeze” in fighting in Syria’s second city of Aleppo.
De Mistura wants the proposed ceasefire zones to allow for aid deliveries and lay the groundwork for peace talks in the three-and-a-half-year conflict that has left 195,000 people dead.
“We are working with the UN envoy ... to try and save Aleppo and on the other hand to create safe zones where it is not possible for Bashar al-Assad’s aircraft and Daesh to pursue Syrians,” said Fabius, using the Arabic name for IS.
“There are quite a few people to convince, the Americans of course,” he added.
“Abandoning Aleppo would be to condemn Syria and its neighbours to years, and I mean years, of chaos, with terrible human consequences.”
Aleppo has been divided into government- and rebel-held areas since an insurgent offensive in mid-2012.
In recent months, government forces have advanced around the outskirts of the eastern portion of the city that is under rebel control, threatening to encircle it completely.
Syria’s main opposition National Coalition on Monday urged de Mistura to include “refuge zones” on the borders with Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey in his plans.
France is involved in strikes against IS militants in Iraq but has so far kept out of the air campaign in Syria, where it has hoped to support moderate rebels without resorting to military action that could help the Assad regime.
