More than 1,000 jihadists have been killed through U.S.-led air strikes in Syria over the past three months, mostly Islamic State militants, a British-based Syrian monitoring group said on Tuesday.
"At least 1,171 have been killed in the Arab and international air strikes (since Sept. 23), including 1,119 jihadists of the Islamic State group and Al-Nusra Front," said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which relies on a network of activists and medics across the war-ravaged country for its information. Specifically, about 1,046 victims belonged to ISIS, which has seized large swaths of land in Iraq and Syria.
Although the death toll was probably higher among hardline Islamist insurgents, it also included 52 civilians, Rami Abdulrahman, the head of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, told Reuters about the military campaign that had been launched in late September.
"This is because of the difficulty of activists reaching areas hit by the coalition and also because the ISIS keeps a tight lid on its human losses," Abdulrahman said.
In addition, 72 of those killed belonged to al-Qaeda's branch in Syria, the Al-Nusra Front, while another was a jihadist prisoner whose affiliation was unknown, the Observatory said in a statement.
In comparison to the first month of the campaign, the U.S. and its allies have significantly scaled down their air strikes in Syria, Agence France-Presse reported. Through Dec. 15, it carried out 488 air strikes in Syria, according to U.S. military data published by Reuters, which did not include casualties from air strikes on ISIS targets in Iraq.
On Tuesday, the Observatory reported the deaths of 29 civilians, including nine children, in regime air raids on another front across Syria.
Meanwhile, having declared a "caliphate" in the parts of Iraq and Syria, ISIS militants have been accused of widespread atrocities, including beheading Western hostages.
In a recent report, it was revealed that the terrorist organization was trafficking human organs from dead soldiers, dead and living hostages, including children, for months, according to al-Monitor news website.
