Men search for survivors amid debris of collapsed buildings after what activists said was an air raid by forces loyal to President Bashar Al Assad in Raqqa province, eastern Syria, yesterday.
BEIRUT: Syrian regime air strikes killed more than 30 people yesterday in the Latakia province, bastion of the ruling Assad clan, and the northern city of Raqa, a monitory group said.
Seven children were among at least 13 civilians killed in an air raid on Raqa, the only provincial capital in rebel hands, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
It said the raid was apparently aimed at positions of the jihadist Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS) which largely controls the city.
ISIS has been the dominant force in the city since its capture by rebels in March. Residents have held several protests against the policies of ISIS, which follows an extremist line of Islam, according to the Observatory.
An Italian Jesuit priest and activist, Paolo Dall’Oglio, who hoped to negotiate with ISIS in Raqa, went missing in the city at the start of August.
In the coastal Latakia province of northwest Syria, as many as 20 people were killed in the air strikes on the village of Salma, including 10 civilians, six Syrian fighters and four foreign fighters, the anti-Assad Syrian Observatory for Human Rights group said yesterday.
Latakia province is a stronghold of the Alawite minority of President Bashar Al Assad, apart from rebel-held pockets.
Amateur video footage posted on the Internet showed a large apartment block with all its outside walls blown out. Men, some in military fatigues, were seen loading bodies onto a pickup truck.
Salma is a Sunni village in the Jabal Al Akrad mountain range which overlooks the Mediterranean. Salma-based rebel forces comprising mainly Islamist brigades, including two Al Qaeda-linked groups, have killed hundreds in offensives this month and have seized several Alawite settlements.
The army has hit back, sparking fierce fighting that has left dozens dead on both sides, according to the Observatory.
Rebels captured the religiously-mixed village of Kharratah three kilometres south of Salma, video posted online on Friday showed.
Assad has deployed extra forces in the region and the air raids reflected an urgent priority to protect the main region of his Alawite sect — 12 percent of Syria’s 21 million people.
In their operation, the rebels have kidnapped a leading Alawite cleric, Sheikh Badreddine Ghazal, said the Observatory, which relies on a network of activists on the ground and medics for its information.
In Damascus, a car bomb ripped through the Shaghur district of the capital late yesterday, wounding several people, three of them children, said the Observatory.
In Aleppo province, further east, government troops stormed a village overnight, killing 12 people, the Observatory said.
Al Nusra Front jihadists and other rebel fighters in the eastern city of Deir Ezzor seized control of the offices of Syria’s ruling Baath party in the Howeika district, sparking regime bombardment, the Observatory said.
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