U.S.-led coalition air strikes have killed 31 people, including 10 from a singular family, in Raqqa city, local monitoring groups said Saturday.
Raqqa Is Being Slaughtered Silently said ten family members were killed when the collation strikes struck their house in Al-Nour Street in the de facto capital of the Islamic State.
Activists said 21 more people have also killed in the past two days. Also, 4 people were killed in Kurdish militia’s artillery on al-Dereiya district.
The U.S.-backed alliance Syrian Democratic Forces broke into the western part of ISIS' stronghold Raqqa, AFP reported.
Backed by U.S.-led coalition air strikes, the Syrian Democratic Forces have spent months tightening the noose on ISIS-held Raqqa and entered the city for the first time earlier this week from the east.
On Saturday, they pierced into Raqqa from the west, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group.
"The SDF captured the western half of the Al-Sabahiya neighbourhood and are reinforcing their positions there," Observatory head Rami Abdel Rahman said.
"They then advanced north to the adjacent district of Al-Romaniya and are fighting ISIS there," he told AFP
In its turn, ISIS said it had killed 15 SDF militants and two U.S. soldiers in al-mashlab neighbourhood.
A statement from the SDF's Operation Wrath of the Euphrates said its fighters stormed Al-Romaniya on Saturday and were locked "in fierce fighting inside the district".
Held by ISIS since 2014, Raqqa emerged as a key hub for the militants' operations in Syria, neighbouring Iraq, and beyond.
The SDF -- an Arab-Kurdish alliance formed in 2015 -- launched its campaign to capture Raqqa in November and chipped away at ISIS territory around the city's north, west, and east.
In addition to holding part of Al-Sabahiya in Raqqa's west, the alliance also controls the eastern neighbourhood of Al-Meshleb.
But the force has struggled to advance from the city's north, where ISIS holds a military complex known as Division 17.
"ISIS has reinforced the northern approach to Raqqa much more, thinking that's how the SDF would try to advance on the city," Abdel Rahman said.
"The western and eastern entrances to the city were much less fortified," he said.
The offensive has been backed by the U.S.-led coalition with air strikes, special forces advisers, weapons, and equipment
