Regime air raids on a town held by the jihadist Islamic State group in northeastern Syria have killed 21 civilians and wounded another 100, a monitoring group has said.
Aircraft dropped seven barrel bombs and other explosives late last night on the IS-held town of Al-Bab northeast of the city of Aleppo, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.
Regime air strikes have repeatedly targeted Al-Bab, a stronghold of the jihadist group that has seized control of large parts of Syria and Iraq.
Syria's military has increasingly resorted to using so-called barrel bombs, which rights groups have condemned as a particularly indiscriminate weapon that often kills civilians.
Barrel bombs are typically constructed from large oil drums, gas cylinders or water tanks filled with high explosives and scrap metal.
The Britain-based Observatory, which relies on a broad network of sources in Syria, and local activists say the regime has stepped its use of the crude weapons in recent weeks, as international attention focuses on the fight against IS.
Yesterday, coalition forces launched airstrikes targeting Islamic State leaders near their northern Iraqi hub of Mosul, the US military said.
It did not confirm whether the group's chief was killed.
The strikes, which destroyed a vehicle convoy of ten IS armed trucks on Friday, targeted a "gathering of ISIL [IS] leaders" near Mosul, US Central Command said.
It added: "We cannot confirm if ISIL [IS] leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was among those present."
"This strike demonstrates the pressure we continue to place on the ISIL terrorist network and the group's increasingly limited freedom to manoeuvre, communicate and command."
The strikes came as US President Barack Obama unveiled plans to send 1,500 additional troops to Iraq to help Baghdad government forces strike back at the extremist fighters.
It roughly doubles the number of US soldiers in the country.
