US-led airstrike kills 8 in Syria, activists say
Associated Press
MURSITPINAR, Turkey
A U.S.-led coalition airstrike on a gas-distribution facility in a stronghold of the Islamic State group set off a series of secondary explosions and killed at least eight people in eastern Syria, activists said Saturday.
The airstrike targeted a distribution station in the town of Khasham in the oil-rich province of Deir el-Zour late Friday, Deir el-Zour Free Radio, an activist collective, said on its Facebook page. The collective named four of those killed and said another four charred bodies were placed in a nearby mosque. It said the slain men were mostly fuel tanker drivers.
Another activist group, the Deir el-Zour Network, described “long tongues of flames” from the strike. The incident also was reported by the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which relies on a network of activists inside Syria.
The U.S.-led coalition has aggressively targeted IS-held oil facilities in Syria, which provide a key source of income for the militants. But such strikes also endanger civilians, which could undermine long-term efforts to destroy the group.
Other airstrikes late Friday targeted oil wells in the Deir el-Zour province, the activists said.
There was no immediate comment by the U.S. military.
The U.S.-led coalition began a bombing campaign against the IS group in Syria in late September after striking at the extremists in neighboring Iraq, where they also hold swaths of territory.
In recent days, much of the coalition’s strikes has focused around the Syrian border town of Kobani, also known as Ayn Arab, which IS militants have been trying to seize since mid-September.
On Saturday, Islamic State militants fired a barrage of mortar rounds toward Kobani, focusing their efforts near the border crossing with Turkey. Some of the shells landed in Turkish territory but did not cause any damage. As gun and mortar fire in the town echoed across the border, at least five coalition airstrikes sent plumes of black smoke into the sky.
Idriss Nassan, a senior Kobani official, said the airstrikes had helped halt the advance of the militants. But he said the Kurdish fighters defending Kobani would need more weapons and ammunition to save the town.