Airstrikes in Syria kill dozens at start of Ramadan

Seventeen civilians including eight children were killed in air raids on a market in eastern Syria on Monday, the first day of the holy Muslim month of Ramadan.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights [SOHR] said the strikes on al-Asharah, a town held by the Islamic State group [IS] in Deir Az-Zour province.

"The market was overcrowded on Monday because people were shopping for Ramadan," SOHR chief Rami Abdel Rahman said in a televised interview.

He said many of those killed were from the same family, and that the death toll was likely to rise because of the serious condition of some of the wounded.

Local activist Amir al-Huwaidi told The New Arab that the attack was most likely carried out by Russian warplanes.

Heavy air raids hit IS-held areas in and outside the divided city of Deir Az-Zour from early on Monday.

IS controls more than 60 percent of the city, besieging an estimated 200,000 people there.

The Islamic militant group also controls most of the surrounding oil-rich province by the same name.

The SOHR relies on a network of sources inside Syria to gather its information on the five-year conflict, which has killed more than 280,000 people and displaced millions.

It says it determines whether strikes were carried out by Syrian, Russian or US-led coalition aircraft based on the location of the raids, flight patterns and the types of planes and munitions involved.

Russia began carrying out strikes in Syria in September 2015, one year after the United States began its air campaign there.

Regime air raids killed at least 15 civilians in the IS-held area of Boleel outside Deir az-Zour city on Friday.