Syrian air strikes over Raqqa Saturday killed 53 people, most of them civilians, according to a London-based human rights group.
Up to 15 Islamic State fighters are believed to have been killed, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said, while 31 civilian deaths were reported.
“We have documented the deaths of 31 civilians, among them five women and three children in Raqqa and its surroundings,” said the monitoring group’s director, Rami Abdel Rahman.
Air strikes intensified as President Bashar al-Assad’s regime stepped up a military campaign to fight Islamic State positions in northern and eastern Syria, AFP reports.
IS militants initially emerged from Syria’s civil war in late spring 2013 and seized parts of the country since then.
