Syrian Air Raids on IS-Held Areas Kill 45 Civilians

As Basher al-Assad's government stepped up air raids, at least 45 civilians were killed and around 175 injured after Syrian planes and helicopters dropped barrel bombs on areas seized by the Islamic State militants.

The barrel bombs are steel drums filled with explosives. The Syrian helicopters and war planes, Thursday and overnight, dropped the bombs on residential as well as industrial areas in the city of al-Bab and Qabaseen, which is north-east of Aleppo.

"People were going about scraping a living and there were no armed groups in the market, only poor people. Why is Assad killing us? May God bring vengeance on him," said Yousef al-Saadi, a resident of Qabaseen and a volunteer with the local civil defense group, told Reuters via Skype.

Since the beginning of the uprising against president Bashar al-Assad in 2011, around 200,000 people have been killed and 3.2 million have fled Syria, while 7.6 million have been displaced within the country.

The British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said that 37 civilians were killed. The overseeing group acquires its information from a wide range of sources.

The United Nations and other rights groups have accused Syria of repeatedly targeting civilian areas.

According to BBC, the Combined Joint Task Force said Friday that the US-led coalition had carried out another 31 air strikes on Islamic State-held areas in Iraq and Syria.

Around 16 of the 31 air strikes were in Syria. Around 13 of those strikes targeted areas around Kobane on the Turkey border.

The 15 air strikes in Iraq were in seven different areas.