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Monitoring groups are warning of increasing civilian casualties in the Syrian Islamic State stronghold of Raqqa as US-backed fighters push closer to the city.
Air strikes have intensified over the past days as Kurdish-led Syria Democratic Forces (SDF) pushed forward, surrounding the Syrian capital from the north, west and east.
The developments come ahead of what is expected to be a major battle for Raqqa in the coming weeks.
Anti-IS activists in the city reported that since Sunday, the US-led coalition carried out more than 30 air strikes.
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said Raqqa city — the de facto capital of the Islamic State group — has been pounded by warplanes and artillery and that more than 40 people had been killed in there past 36 hours.
Residents reported the coalition dropped leaflets on Raqqa, urging residents to leave the city.
"This is your last chance. Failing to leave could lead to death. Raqqa will fall. Don't be there when it happens," read one of the leaflets.
But activists said IS had been preventing people from leaving Raqqa and many fear that residents will be used as human shields when SDF, the most effective force fighting the extremists in Syria, begin marching in the city that has been held by IS since January 2014.
The US-backed SDF has been encircling Raqqa since November in a multi-phased offensive that is also fighting IS militants in Iraq.
Some 3,000 to 4,000 IS fighters are thought to be left holed up in Raqqa city where they continue to erect defences against the anticipated assault, drawing coalition air strikes to stop them, Colonel Ryan Dillon, a spokesman for the US-led coalition, said.
IS defences include earthen berms, some of them designed to hold large pools of water.
In some cases, these had collapsed, causing flooding in Raqqa city.
ABC/AP