BEIRUT: At least 32 Daesh terrorists were killed on Sunday in apparent US-led coalition raids on Syria as President Bashar Assad slammed Britain’s decision to participate in airstrikes.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitor said at least 32 fighters had been killed in some 15 strikes on the group’s stronghold of Raqqa province in northern Syria.

The monitor’s head, Rami Abdel Rahman, said at least 40 terrorists were also wounded in the strikes, which hit Daesh headquarters and bases to the north, east and southeast of provincial capital Raqqa city.

Abdel Rahman said the casualty figures were collected from a single hospital and the final toll from the airstrikes could rise.

In an interview published Sunday in Britain’s The Sunday Times newspaper, Assad slammed London’s decision to begin strikes in Syria as “illegal” and said its actions would cause “terrorism” to spread.

“It will be harmful and illegal and it will support terrorism as happened after the coalition started its operation a year or so (ago),” he said.

Terror, he said, was like a cancer, which needed to be tackled with a “comprehensive” strategy, which would involve working with troops on the ground.

“You cannot cut out part of the cancer. You have to extract it. This kind of operation is like cutting out part of the cancer. That will make it spread in the body faster.

“You cannot defeat (Daesh) through airstrikes alone. You cannot defeat them without cooperation with forces on the ground. You cannot defeat them if you do not have buy-in from the general public and the government,” he said.

“They are going to fail again.”

On Sunday, the Observatory said the group had executed a media activist in the city of Deir Ezzor by tying him to two vehicles, which were then driven in opposite directions.

Daesh accused the activist of “collaborating with the Crusader coalition” after discovering broadcasting equipment during a raid on his home, the Observatory said.