Beirut: France’s first air strike on Daesh in Syria killed at least 30 militants, including 12 child soldiers, a monitoring group said on Wednesday.
“The French air strike (on Sunday) on an Daesh training camp in eastern Syria killed at least 30 Daesh fighters including 12 from the ‘Cubs of the Caliphate,’” said Rami Abdul Rahman of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
Daesh calls its child soldiers “Cubs of the Caliphate”.
Abdul Rahman said foreign Daesh fighters were also among the dead, and that the strike had wounded around 20 people.
The raid took place in Syria’s eastern province of Deir Al Zor, near the Al Bu Kamal border crossing used by Daesh to link the Syrian and Iraqi parts of its so-called “caliphate”.
President Francois Hollande said on Sunday that six French warplanes hit an Daesh training camp near Deir Al Zor city, and that more strikes could follow in the coming weeks.
“We struck militarily an extremely sensitive site for (Daesh),” said French Defence Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian, describing it as a “strategic hub” for militants travelling between Iraq and Syria.
It was France’s first air strike in Syria as part of the US-led coalition fighting the extremist group there and in Iraq.
France was already bombing Daesh targets in Iraq and had carried out 215 of the nearly 4,500 air strikes there.
