\n US-led coalition raids on Raqa in northern Syria have killed 29 civilians over the past 24 hours as American-backed forces battle the Islamic State group, a monitor said Tuesday.\n<\/p>\n
\n The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said nine women and 14 children had been killed in coalition air raids on Raqa city since Monday evening.\n<\/p>\n
\n It said 14 of the dead were members of one family.\n<\/p>\n
\n The toll could rise because of the number of critically wounded, it added.\n<\/p>\n
\n The American-led coalition battling IS in Syria and Iraq on Tuesday entered its fourth year of operations.\n<\/p>\n
\n It began on August 8, 2014 in Iraq, moving later to battle the jihadists in neighbouring Syria.\n<\/p>\n
\n The United States is backing an Arab-Kurdish alliance that is fighting to oust IS from Raqa, its main Syrian stronghold, and the province of the same name.\n<\/p>\n
\n The Observatory, which relies on a network of sources inside Syria for its information, has regularly reported civilians killed by coalition strikes.\n<\/p>\n
\n It says it determines what aircraft carried out raids according to their type, location, flight patterns and the munitions involved.\n<\/p>\n
\n The United States has admitted that its strikes caused the deaths of 624 civilians since 2014. Rights organisations say the number is far higher.\n<\/p>\n
\n United Nations war crimes investigators in June expressed alarm at the rise in civilian deaths in the fight for Raqa.\n<\/p>\n
\n Intensified air strikes had caused \"staggering loss of civilian life\" and led to 160,000 civilians fleeing their homes, Paulo Sergio Pinheiro, head of the UN Commission of Inquiry, told reporters.\n<\/p>\n
\n Captured by the jihadists in 2014, Raqa became a symbol of atrocities by IS in its self-declared \"caliphate\".\n<\/p>\n
\n The Syrian Democratic Forces alliance began a campaign to capture the city last year, slowly encircling the city before breaking into it for the first time in June.\n<\/p>\n
\n They have since advanced in a pincer-like motion and taken around 45 percent of the city.\n<\/p>\n
\n The jihadist group has responded with a barrage of car bombs, suicide bombers, weaponised drones and snipers.\n<\/p>\n
\n Progress inside Raqa has been hampered by IS mines, which have slowed advancing SDF fighters and also had devastating consequences for civilians trying to flee.\n<\/p>\n
\n To the southeast, Syrian government forces backed by their Russian allies are fighting IS in the oil-rich province of Deir Ezzor.\n<\/p>\n
\n More than 330,000 people have been killed in Syria since the conflict began with anti-government protests in March 2011.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
US-led coalition raids on Raqa in northern Syria have killed 29 civilians over the past 24 hours as American-backed forces battle the Islamic State group, a monitor said Tuesday. The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said nine women and 14 children had been killed in coalition air raids on Raqa city since Monday evening. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":60,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[553],"tags":[],"ji_location":[],"class_list":["post-34292","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-live-feed"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n