Heavy U.S. Coalition Air Strikes on Raqqa

U.S.-led aircraft carried out 38 airstrikes against Islamic State fighters over the weekend, many of them around the radicals’ self-proclaimed capital of Raqqa.

The Islamic State said at least 10 of its fighters were killed in the aerial onslaught and dozens wounded.

A Raqqa-based anti-Islamic State activist network called Raqqa is Being Silently Slaughtered also declared that eight civilians were killed by the coalition airstrikes, including a 10-year-old child, the Associated Press reported.

A spokesman for the U.S.-led coalition Operation Inherent Resolve said 18 of the strikes destroyed vehicles and bridges around Raqqa in “one of the largest deliberate engagements … conducted to date in Syria,” Voice of America reported.

The attacks, the spokesman added, would deny Islamic State “the ability to move military capabilities throughout Syria and into Iraq.”

The airstrikes also targeted Islamic State fighters, structures and equipment near Hassakeh and Kobani in Syria and Habbaniyah, Haditha, Makhmour, Mosul, Sinjar and Tal Afar in Iraq.

The Islamic State considers Raqqa its de facto capital of a self-declared Islamic caliphate of territories it controls in Iraq and Syria.

In a related development, the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported that Islamic State fighters had seized back the town of Ayn Issa near Raqqa city, recovering ground after it was pummeled by heavy U.S.-led airstrikes.

Rebels Make Gains in Government-held Aleppo

Rebels made a major push over the weekend into government-held western Aleppo, seizing an army barracks in one district, observers reported.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said that fighters from the Conquest of Aleppo alliance on Friday captured a former research center being used as a military barracks, according to The Guardian.

“This is a significant strategic step in terms of the battle that has been going on in Aleppo in the past two years,” said Observatory director Rami Abdulrahman.

The observers added that government forces later tried unsuccessfully to recapture the facility and launched air raids against it on Saturday.

The Conquest of Aleppo alliance and Ansar al-Sharia, which is dominated by Islamists and al-Qaida’s local affiliate Jabhat al-Nusra, began a major offensive against government-held districts of Aleppo last week.

Syria expert Thomas Pierret of Edinburgh University said the rebel gains could be important: he was quoted in The Guardian as saying it “is the first real progress by the rebels in Aleppo since … July 2013.”

The loss of the Scientific Research Centre meant “the regime has lost an important line of defense, which leaves their control of west Aleppo more vulnerable,” he added.

Islamic State Stages Mass Execution at Palmyra

Islamic State militants staged a mass execution within the ruins of Palmyra, according to a video released by the group.

The video shows Islamic State fighters killing 20 soldiers in an open-air theater and blowing up a prison, according to private terrorist-tracking group SITE Intel Group, reported in USA Today.

The soldiers were apparently taken prisoner in Homs. The video shows the executioners as young men, possibly as young as 13 or 14, in front of an audience of several hundred men in civilian clothes, the BBC reported.

It wasn’t clear when the video was shot.

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