AMMAN (Dispatches) – More than 170 civilians have been killed by U.S.-led strikes in the Syrian city of Raqqah city in the past week, a spike in casualties since an offensive to allegedly oust the terrorists began more than two months ago, a war monitor and sources said.
The U.S.-led coalition against Daesh said attacks on terrorists were conducted routinely and the allegation had been sent to their teams for assessment.
The monitoring group Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said at least 42 people, including 19 children and 12 women, were killed on Monday in strikes that destroyed buildings where families were sheltering.
The Britain-based Observatory said that was the single largest daily death toll since the U.S.-backed Syria Democratic Forces (SDF), a group of Kurdish and Arab militias, began their assault on Raqqa last June after a long campaign to isolate Islamic State inside the city.

Daesh in Dayr al-Zawr for Last Battle

Meanwhile, the remaining members of the Daesh terrorist group are gathering in Syria’s Dayr al-Zawr province for their last stand, says the Russian Defense Ministry.
"The remaining [terrorist] forces are heading there. According to our data, militants from Mosul [in Iraq] moved there and the most battle-ready units from Raqqah,” said spokesman for the Russian General Staff, General Sergey Rudskoy, on Monday.
He noted that despite the fact that most of the terrorists had left Raqqah, the U.S.-backed SDF forces have still not been able to capture the city.
"Syrian government forces supported by Russian Aerospace forces are swiftly pushing from three directions towards Dayr al-Zawr at the moment. The foothold around the city is the last stronghold of terrorists on Syrian soil,” he added.
"The defeat of the main forces of the most odious terrorist group, Daesh, which intended to create a so-called ‘caliphate,’ will be completed with lifting the siege of Dayr al-Zawr,” he added.
Rudskoy went on to note that Russian Air Force has considerably increased its operations against Daesh in August, boosting the number of sorties to 60-70 per day as the push for Dayr al-Zawr gains momentum.
Meanwhile, the Lebanese Hezbollah resistance movement says it has used weaponized unmanned aerial vehicles to strike the positions of the Daesh terrorists in the strategic and mountainous region of Qalamoun close to the border with Lebanon.
Hezbollah’s media bureau announced in a statement on Monday that it had deployed the drones to hit Daesh positions, bunkers and fortifications in the area, located about 330 kilometers (205 miles) north of the Syrian capital Damascus.
Video footage released by the media unit, seemingly taken from a drone, showed two types of missiles, one of them with a tail fin, cruising towards the ground and subsequent explosions as they struck the designated targets.
Earlier on Monday, Hezbollah’s media bureau reported that the Lebanese resistance fighters and Syrian government forces had wrested complete control over Shoubat al-Dowab and Shoubat Beit Shuker heights in the western outskirts of Qalamoun.