A US airstrike hit an oil refinery in northern Syria, in ISIS-held territory today, killing at least 30 people, including a number of civilian workers employed at the site.
Rebel mouthpiece the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported that some ISIS militants were killed in the attack, but that the rest were refinery workers from the surrounding area.
ISIS territory includes most of the oil-producing regions of Syria, and the US regularly targets the oil infrastructure there, saying it will deny ISIS the funds they get from oil smuggling.
That’s likely true, but the attacks are also badly crippling the only meaningful civilian economic infrastructure in those regions, in essence attacking the civilian economy militarily in the hopes of doing some damage by proxy to the occupying force.
