DAMASCUS: US-led warplanes kept up strikes on oil sites funding the Islamic State group on Sunday, as Al Qaeda’s Syria affiliate threatened reprisals after a key operative was reported killed.

The coalition raids destroyed three makeshift oil refineries in jihadist-controlled territory in Syria, intensifying efforts to deny IS funding after a wave of strikes on its oil infrastructure on Thursday night.

IS controls a swathe of territory straddling northwestern Iraq and eastern Syria, that includes most of Syria’s main oil fields and which the jihadists have sought to exploit through improvised refining and smuggling.

The coalition strikes hit close by the Turkish frontier, near Tal Abyad just across the border from the Turkish town of Akcakale, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

“At least three makeshift refineries under IS control in the Tal Abyad region were destroyed,” the Observatory said.

“IS had been refining crude and selling it to Turkish buyers,” said the Britain-based watchdog, which has a broad network of sources inside Syria.

Before the launch of US-led air strikes on IS in Syria last Tuesday analysts say the jihadists were earning as much as $3 million (2.4 million euros) a day from oil revenues.

The strikes around Tal Abyad came after Saturday raids near the mainly Kurdish town of Ain al-Arab, also very close to the Turkish border.

The town, known as Kobane in Kurdish, has been under assault by IS for more than a week, sparking an exodus of at least 160,000 refugees into Turkey.

The coalition also kept up its raids on the jihadist heartland province of Raqa early Sunday as it pressed what Washington says are “near continuous” strikes.

The raids destroyed a plastics factory outside Raqa city, killing one civilian, the Observatory said.

IS oil infrastructure has been one of the main targets of the bombing campaign in Syria that Washington and its Arab allies launched last Tuesday, building on the air war under way against IS in Iraq since August 8.

Human Rights Watch, meanwhile, said apparent US missile strikes had killed at least seven civilians in Idlib province in northwestern Syria last Tuesday, calling for a probe into possible violations of the laws of war.

On the ground, Iraqi pro-government forces backed by warplanes on Sunday repelled an IS attack on the strategic western town of Amriyat al-Fallujah, security sources said.

“Warplanes eventually engaged the insurgents and killed 15 of them,” local police chief Aref al-Janabi said, without identifying the aircraft.

The town “has strategic importance. It is a main logistics road for the army and it is the link between Anbar and Karbala,” a Shia holy city south of Baghdad, Janabi said.

Multiple European governments have approved plans to join the air campaign in Iraq, including most recently Britain.

British fighter jets flew their first combat mission over Iraq on Saturday but returned to base in Cyprus without firing a shot.

Published in Dawn, September 29th, 2014