PARIS ATTACKS: France launches ‘massive’ air strikes on Islamic State

France launched “massive” air strikes on the Islamic State group’s de facto capital in Syria, destroying a jihadi training camp and a munitions dump in the city of Raqqa, where Iraqi intelligence officials say the attacks on Paris were planned.

A dozen aircraft, including 10 fighter jets, dropped a total of 20 bombs in the biggest air strikes since France extended its bombing campaign against the extremist group to Syria in September, a defence ministry statement said. The jets launched from sites in Jordan and the Persian Gulf.

On the sidelines of the G20 summit in Turkey, France’s foreign minister Laurent Fabius said his country was justified in taking action in Syria.

“It was normal to take the initiative and action and France had the legitimacy to do so,” said Fabius. “We did it already in the past, we have conducted new airstrikes in Raqqa today.

“One cannot be attacked so harshly, and you know the drama that is happening in Paris, without being present and active.”

There were more than 30 explosions heard in the Raqqa city area, said Rami Abdulrahman, head of the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which monitors the conflict using a network of sources on the ground.

It was not immediately clear if all the blasts were caused by air strikes or other weaponry.

Islamic State, which uses Raqqa as the capital of its self-declared caliphate, is restricting movement in the city, making it difficult to collect information on casualties, Abdulrahman said.

France’s defence ministry said 10 French fighter jets dropped bombs on Syria targeting Islamic State, the ultra hardline group which has claimed responsibility for the attacks in Paris.

An anti-Islamic State activist group, Raqqa is Being Slaughtered Silently, said the French strikes hit ‘Division 17’ and ‘Avant-garde camp’ in Raqqa and provided maps of their locations on its Twitter feed. It said there were no reports of casualties so far.

The group said one strike hit an area where Kayla Mueller, a US hostage, had been held in Raqqa before being killed earlier this year.

It posted a video with audio of the rumble of jets overhead which it said was from inside Raqqa.