US-led strikes in Syria kill 1,600 in five months

U.S.-led airstrikes against the ISIS in Syria have killed more than 1,600 people, mainly jihadis, since they began five months ago, an activist group said Monday, AFP reported.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said almost all of those killed were jihadis from ISIS and Al-Qaeda’s Syrian affiliate Al-Nusra Front, though it also documented the deaths of 62 civilians.

The Britain-based activist group said the strikes that began on September 23 had killed 1,465 members of ISIS, most of them non-Syrians.

Another 73 fighters from Al-Nusra Front were killed, along with a man from a rebel group being held prisoner by ISIS in the group’s de facto capital Raqqa.

Washington and a small coalition of Arab countries began strikes against ISIS in Syria last year, expanding U.S.-led operations with a broader coalition already underway against ISIS in Iraq.

ISIS emerged in Syria in 2013, growing from Al-Qaeda’s former Iraqi affiliate.

But it broke with Al-Qaeda and declared an Islamic “caliphate” in territory it controls in Syria and Iraq, attracting a steady stream of foreign fighters and carrying out abuses including beheadings.

 

 

http://www.panorama.am/en/society/2015/02/23/syria-strikes/