Syria regime raids on Islamic State ‘capital’ kill 95

Syrian regime air strikes on Islamic State group stronghold Raqa killed at least 95 people as a government delegation prepared for talks with key ally Russia Wednesday on relaunching peace negotiations.
The bombing on Tuesday was the deadliest by President Bashar al-Assad’s air force in Raqa since Sunni extremist IS fighters seized control of the city last year and declared it their capital.
More than half of the dead were civilians, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which monitors the war through a network of sources.
It was unknown how many jihadists were killed.
Raqa was the first provincial capital to fall from regime control, and it was later overrun by IS which has used it as the capital of its self-proclaimed “caliphate” straddling Syria and neighbouring Iraq.
The multi-sided Syrian conflict has killed more than 195,000 people and forced millions from their homes since it began three and a half years ago as an uprising against Assad’s regime.
The government has in recent months stepped up its air strikes against IS-held towns in the north and east, with most of the casualties reported to have been civilians.
Raqa has also been the target of repeated air strikes by the US-led coalition fighting the jihadists.
The exiled opposition Syrian National Coalition condemned the strikes as a “brutal massacre”, warning that “many seem now convinced that Assad is the major beneficiary of the US-led coalition strikes” against the jihadists.