Is this how the Obama administration handles a civil war in Syria?
BEIRUT — A U.S.-led coalition 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 Sunday.
60,000 leaflets dropped in Sarrin and Raqqa
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 the Islamic State group.
The latest leaflet drop comes as YPG fighters have been advancing in northern Syria as close as 50 kilometres north of Raqqa.
Coalition warplanes have dropped such leaflets in the past. One previous had a cartoon showing masked Islamic State extremists at a “hiring office” feeding people into a meat grinder.
The Islamic State group holds about a third of Syria and neighbouring 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 told The Associated Press that the police chief in the town of Khan Beni Saad, where the attack happened, and three officers have been fired in the wake of the bombing. They said two other officers are being investigated.
The officials spoke on condition of anonymity as they weren’t authorized to talk to journalists.
