Air and missile strikes in Syria by the United States and its allies over the last month have killed more than 500 extremist fighters as well as at least 32 civilians, a Syrian monitoring group said on Thursday. The tally compiled by the group, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, provides one of the first measures of the impact of the American-led military campaign against the extremist group known as the Islamic State, which has seized territory in Syria and Iraq. But the numbers also hint at ways in which the strikes have made life harder for civilians in some areas administered by the Islamic State, which is also known as ISIS or ISIL. In addition to imposing its harsh interpretation of Islam, often through public beheadings and other forms of execution, the Islamic State oversees the distribution of fuel and grain. The strikes have hurt its distribution abilities, leading to a rise in fuel prices across areas that have already been battered by more than three and a half years of war, according to activists in Islamic State areas. “There have been lots of strikes targeting the oil wells and refineries that were once a huge source of income for the Islamic State,” said a Syrian activist reached in the eastern, oil-rich province of Deir al-Zour, through Skype. He spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid retribution by the extremists. “Prices for fuel have gone up, and that has affected all the other prices in the region,” the activist said. The new death toll suggests that strikes on the Islamic State by the American-led coalition, which began on Sept. 23, have hurt the group, killing at least 464 fighters across northern and eastern Syria, the Observatory said. The strikes have also killed at least 57 members of the Nusra Front, Al Qaeda’s affiliate in Syria, which has clashed with the Islamic State while maintaining close ties with mainline rebel groups seeking to topple the government of President Bashar al-Assad. The number of extremist fighters killed is likely much higher, the Observatory said, because the groups cover up some deaths. At least 32 civilians have also been killed in the strikes, including six children and five women, according to the Observatory, which is based in Britain and tracks the conflict through a network of contacts in Syria. Most of the civilians, however, were killed in strikes on nonmilitary facilities of the Islamic State, according to Rami Abdul Rahman, the Observatory’s founder. These included seven men killed in Deir al-Zour Province in a strike on an Islamic State oil facility where the men were trying to buy fuel; 14 civilians killed in strikes on other oil facilities in the northern province of Hasaka; one killed in a strike on a factory in Raqqa; and two in a strike on a grain mill outside Aleppo. Eight others, including four children and one woman, were killed on the first day of the campaign in a strike targeting a Nusra Front base, the Observatory said. President Obama has said the campaign seeks to destroy the Islamic State by undermining its finances and helping other forces, like the Iraqi Army and Syrian rebel groups, advance. The United States Central Command, or Centcom, which oversees military operations in the Middle East, provides frequent reports on targets struck but has not given casualty numbers for extremist fighters or civilians in Syria or Iraq. A Centcom spokesman said Thursday that it had received reports of civilian casualties but had not been able to verify them. “We continue to have no operational reporting or intelligence indicating that U.S. or coalition airstrikes have caused civilians casualties in Iraq or Syria,” the Centcom spokesman, Maj. Curtis J. Kellogg, said in an email. Across the border in Iraq, where the United States has been bombing Islamic State positions since August, it remains unclear how many civilians, if any, have been killed in the strikes. The American military has been worried about the effect that civilian casualties would likely have on public opinion in Iraq, especially in Sunni areas where the Iraqi government has been trying to woo people away from the militants and convince them to take up arms against the extremists.
Posted on: Fri, 24 Oct 2014 02:47:34 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015