US-led air strikes have targeted Syrian oil installations held by the Islamic State group, killing about 20 people, as the militants released dozens of detainees in their de facto capital, activists said.
Warplanes from the US-led coalition bombed oil installations and other facilities in territory controlled by Islamic State (IS) militants in eastern Syria for a second consecutive day today, activists said.
The strikes hit two oil areas in Deir el-Zour province a day after America and its Arab allies pummelled a dozen makeshift oil producing facilities in the same area near Syria’s border with Iraq. The raids aim to cripple one of the militants’ primary sources of cash – black market oil sales which the US says earn up to 2 dollars million a day.
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the strikes overnight and early today hit the Tink oil field as well as the Qouriyeh oil-producing area in Deir el-Zour. It said air raids also targeted the IS headquarters in the town of Mayadeen.
Another activist collective, the Local Co-ordination Committees, also reported four strikes on Mayadeen which it said were carried out by the coalition.
The Observatory, which relies on a network of activists inside Syria, said there were reports of casualties in the strikes, but did not have concrete figures.
The US-led coalition, which began its aerial campaign against IS fighters in Syria early on Tuesday, aims to roll back and ultimately crush the extremist group that has created a proto-state spanning the Syria-Iraq border.
The militants have massacred captured Syrian and Iraqi troops, terrorised minorities in both countries and beheaded two American journalists and a British aid worker.