MURSITPINAR: A US-led coalition airstrike on a gas distribution facility in a stronghold of the Islamic State group set off a series of secondary explosions and killed at least eight people in eastern Syria, activists said on Saturday.

The airstrike targeted a distribution station in the town of Khasham in the oil-rich province of Deir el-Zour late on Friday, Deir el-Zour Free Radio, an activist collective, said on its Facebook page.

The collective named four of those killed and said another four charred bodies were placed in a nearby mosque. It said the slain men were mostly fuel tanker drivers.

Another activist group, the Deir el-Zour Network, described “long tongues of flames” from the strike.

The incident was also reported by the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which relies on a network of activists inside Syria. The US-led coalition has aggressively targeted IS-held oil facilities in Syria, which provide a key source of income for the militants.

But such strikes also endanger civilians, which could undermine long-term efforts to destroy the group. Other airstrikes late Friday targeted oil wells in the Deir el-Zour province, the activists said. There was no immediate comment by the US military. The US-led coalition began a bombing campaign against the IS group in Syria in late September after striking at the extremists in neighbouring Iraq, where they also hold swaths of territory.

Published in Dawn, October 19th, 2014