This article is more than 5 years old

This article is more than 5 years old

The US-led coalition has dropped new leaflets over the de facto capital of the Islamic State group in Syria, warning those below that “freedom will come” to the region, activists said on Sunday.

US-led forces also carried out 16 air strikes in Iraq and nine in Syria on Saturday, the US military said.

A Raqqa-based anti-Islamic State group and the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the leaflets had drawings showing dead extremists and their flag turned upside down. Four fighters with the main Kurdish militia, the People’s Protection Units, or YPG, walked down a street in the picture, with two words in Arab below: “Freedom will come.”



The network called Raqqa is Being Silently Slaughtered posted a copy of the leaflets on its Twitter account. There was no immediate response from Isis.

YPG fighters have been advancing in northern Syria as close as 30 miles north of Raqqa.

Coalition warplanes have dropped such leaflets in the past. One had a cartoon showing masked Isis extremists at a “hiring office” feeding people into a meat grinder.

The Saturday air strikes hit or destroyed tactical units, tunnels, buildings and weaponry in six Iraqi cities, with the most strikes – six – centered on Ramadi, the Combined Joint Task Force said in a statement on Sunday.

In Syria, the coalition said eight air strikes around Hasakah – where militants launched an offensive last month – hit six fighting positions, three vehicles, two weapons caches and a bunker system. The ninth strike was near Raqqa.

The Islamic State group holds about a third of Syria and Iraq in its self-declared “caliphate”. On Friday, a truck bombing by the group in Iraq’s eastern Diyala province killed 115 people at a crowded market.

On Sunday, two senior Iraqi police officials said the police chief in the town of Khan Beni Saad, where the attack happened, and three officers had been fired in the wake of the bombing. They said two other officers were being investigated.

The officials spoke on condition of anonymity as they were not authorised to talk to journalists.