The Syrian air force carried out seven airstrikes against rebels' positions in a strategic contested town in the southern province of Daraa amid ongoing clashes that killed at least four jihadists in that area over the past hours, Xinhua reported according to a monitoring group.
Ongoing clashes between extremist groups and the Syrian army continued to rage in the town of Sheikh Miskin in Daraa Tuesday, said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, adding that the Syrian air force dropped crude barrel bombs in addition to seven airstrikes against the positions of the al-Qaida-linked Nusra Front and likeminded groups in the town.
It said that one of the killed jihadists was a commander of a rebel group, known as Ansar al-Sharia.
Shaikh Miskin, 22 km from Daraa, was subject to "systematic" rebel attacks due to its strategic location that links several areas in the southern region, according to the state news agency SANA.
The Nusra Front and like-minded groups have recently been on an offensive to recapture the government-controlled areas in Daraa bordering Jordan.
Separately, the observatory said the Syrian air force carried out 10 airstrikes against the northern province of al-Raqqa, which is the de facto capital of the Islamic State (IS) militants, killing 63, including 36 civilians.
It said the number of causalities will likely rise due to the large numbers of gravely-wounded people. The death toll couldn't be verified independently.
The Syrian crisis has been dragging on since 2011 with no sign of abating despite all of the international efforts to bring the long-running crisis to a close.
The conflict has got more complicated when ultra-radical groups, like the IS and the Nusra Front, joined the fight to serve their own interests in the war-torn country, where over 190,000 people were reportedly killed and millions of others displaced during the grinding war.