BEIRUT - US-led air strikes killed at least 20 Islamic State fighters in northeastern Syria near the border with Iraq, an organisation monitoring the conflict said on Friday.
Rami Abdulrahman, who runs the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, said 19 explosions were heard during the air strikes in al-Shadadi in the northeastern province of Hasaka on Thursday. One civilian was also killed in the air strikes, he said.
The US-led alliance started bombing Islamic State targets in Syria in September as part of a strategy aimed at rolling back the group’s territorial gains in Syria and Iraq.
Jordanian war planes participating in the alliance carried out bombing raids against Islamic State targets on Thursday, Jordanian state TV reported, without giving the location of the air strikes.
Meanwhile, three people were wounded, including one policeman, in an explosion Friday at a police checkpoint near the Syrian border in the southern Turkish town of Suruc, local officials said.
The cause of the blast was not immediately clear but Turkish media said emergency service vehicles rushed to the scene.
“The explosion took place in a rubbish bin close to a police checkpoint. Three people, including a policeman, were lightly wounded,” the governor of the Sanliurfa region, which includes Suruc, Izzettin Kucuk, told Turkish television.
First images from the scene showed that a car had been severely damaged by the blast. Kucuk did not say if the explosion had been caused by a bomb.
Suruc lies just over the border from the Syrian town of Kobane which was recaptured last month by Kurdish fighters after a battle with Islamic State jihadists.