30 killed in Russia strikes on Islamic State bastion of Raqa

BEIRUT: Russian air strikes on the Islamic State group bastion of Raqa in northern Syria killed at least 30 people on Thursday, including civilians and jihadists,

BEIRUT: Russian air strikes on the Islamic State group bastion of Raqa in northern Syria killed at least 30 people on Thursday, including civilians and jihadists, a monitoring group said.

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The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said 10 raids hit the city and its outskirts, wounding at least 70 others.

Russia confirmed six Tupolev warplanes carried out airstrikes around Raqa, but said it had demolished “a chemical weapons factory in the city’s northwestern outskirts.”

The defence ministry said the raids also destroyed a weapons storage facility and a training camp for IS fighters to the north and south-east.

The ministry said the jihadists had suffered “significant material damages” in the strikes and that “a large number of fighters have been killed.”

The raids comes a day after the ministry said it would halt fire around Syria’s ravaged city of Aleppo for three hours each day to let in humanitarian aid, an initiative the United Nations said is insufficient to meet the city’s needs. The UN has called for urgent aid access to Aleppo and 48-hour weekly pauses for the aid deliveries, warning civilians are at grave risk from water shortages and disease as fighting has intensified.

Doctors in Aleppo made a heart-wrenching plea for the US to help civilians hit by fighting despite a promised Russian aid window.

They implored President Barack Obama to protect civilians from atrocities .“Unless a permanent lifeline to Aleppo is opened it will be only a matter of time until we are again surrounded by regime troops, hunger takes hold and hospitals’ supplies run completely dry,” they said in a letter.