BEIRUT (AFP) - At least 13 civilians, including seven children, were killed in a Syrian regime air strike on Saturday in Raqa, the only provincial capital in rebel hands, a monitoring group said.

"Thirteen civilians, among them six little girls and a boy aged four, died when a military helicopter dropped several explosive barrels on sectors" of the city, mostly held by the jihadist Islamic State of Syria and the Levant, said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.