Beirut - At least 30 jihadists and civilian oil workers were killed when the US-led coalition against the Islamic State militant group carried out an airstrike against a Syrian oil refinery, a monitoring group said Sunday.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said that the strike hit a refinery on the western outskirts of Tel Abyad, on Syria's border with Turkey.
Trade in oil from small refineries in areas under its control has reportedly been one of the Islamic State's main sources of funding.
The International Energy Agency in October estimated that the US-led air campaign has cut production in areas under Islamic State control from 70 000 to 20 000 barrels per day.
Observatory director Rami Abdel-Rahman said he was not yet able to confirm how many of those killed in the Tel Abyad strike were Islamic State fighters and how many were civilians.
Other airstrikes were reported upon Islamic State positions west of the town amid clashes between the extremists and Kurdish forces who are trying to advance from their enclave around Kobane.
The Kurds say they have now recaptured most of the self-declared autonomous canton of Kobane, after intensive coalition airstrikes helped them push back a major Islamic State assault, which began in September.
Government barrel bomb attacks and shelling meanwhile killed seven civilians, including two children, in Talbiseh, north of the central Syrian city of Homs, the Observatory said.
Rebel forces have held out in a small, mainly rural area north of Homs since the government last year regained control of most of the city and, with it, almost all of central Syria.
DPA