The US-led coalition against the Islamic State (Isil) is for the first time killing more civilians with its airstrikes than Russia is with its own bombing campaign, according to a new analysis.

Coalition warplanes have dramatically stepped up their strikes against Isil in both Mosul and Raqqa, while Russia has scaled back its campaign in Syria after a patchy ceasefire went into effect in December.

While Russia has killed far more civilians in total than the coalition, it is currently killing fewer civilians than the allies, research by the Airwars monitoring group found.

Airwars estimated that between 254 and 369 civilians were killed by the coalition in Iraq and Syria in January. That is almost twice the number estimated killed in December, when 134 to 187 civilians were found to have died.