Airstrike kills at least 15 in eastern Syria

IS overran Raqa in 2014, transforming it into the de facto Syrian capital of its self-declared “caliphate”.

Meanwhile, Israel has attacked a series of targets in Syria, after several projectiles from the war ravaged country landed in the occupied Golan Heights.

Turkey’s army said YPG machine-gun fire on Tuesday evening targeted Turkey-backed Free Syrian Army elements in the Maranaz area south of the town of Azaz in northern Syria.

“The strikes hit an IS jail in Mayadeen at dawn on Monday, killing 44 prisoners and 15 jihadists”, Observatory chief Rami Abdel Rahman told AFP.

Mattis addressed another aspect of Syria’s tangled conflict – the U.S. supply of weapons to Kurdish fighters battling to recapture the Islamic State stronghold of Raqa in the north.

CNN broadcasted a sneak peek of the streets of Raqqa: the ISIS terrorist organization’s crumbling capital city in Syria. “Special Presidential Envoy Brett McGurk visits Iraq and Syria often to discuss humanitarian and stabilization assistance, and to coordinate between our military and civilian initiatives, as well as post-liberation governance for areas liberated from ISIS with our partners on the ground”, said a spokesperson at the department.

The two groups said the US -led coalition was behind the strike.

The Syrian Democratic Forces have the city totally surrounded and have started advancing, Reuters reports.

Alloush said McGurk and other coalition officials, including its deputy commander Major General Rupert Jones, promised infrastructure help but did not discuss how much money was available. It was not clear how they identified the aircraft responsible.

The White House yesterday accused Assad’s regime of preparing a potential chemical attack and warned it would pay a “heavy price”, but Defence Secretary Jim Mattis said Washington was determined to keep a strict focus on fighting IS. Meanwhile Turkey, which views the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) which fights alongside the SDF as terrorists, is angry at the United States for supplying weapons to the SDF. Turkey views the YPG as an extension of the Kurdish insurgency raging in its southeast.

Three weeks ago the Syrian Democratic Forces, a coalition of Syrian groups mostly led by Kurdish fighters, began their assault on Raqqa.