Coalition airstrike kills 10 civilians in northeast Syria: monitor

The coalition has to date acknowledged 892 civilian deaths from airstrikes, but monitors say the real tally is much higher.

MENA

2 min read

The New Arab & agencies

12 June, 2018

Heavy smoke billows following an airstrike in Raqqa

Heavy smoke billows following a coalition airstrike in Raqqa [File photo: Getty]

A US-led coalition airstrike on a village in northeast Syria held by Islamic State militants killed at least 10 civilians, including three children.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said on Tuesday the strikes occurred on Tal al-Shair in the northeastern province of Hasakeh.

AFP reported there was no immediate confirmation from the coalition of the strike, the latest in a series of raids to have reportedly caused civilian casualties in the area in past weeks.

Tal al-Shair lies in a small pocket still held by IS fighters near the Iraqi border in the south of Hasakeh, where a Kurdish-Arab alliance backed by the coalition has been battling the jihadists in recent days.

According to the Observatory, a coalition air strike last week killed 11 civilians in the same IS-held area, and another 12 lost their lives in coalition raids on 1 June.

Earlier this month, the coalition admitted to nine more civilians deaths, bringing to 892 the total number of civilians it acknowledges to have killed since it intervened in Iraq and Syria in 2014.

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Monitors like the Observatory and Airwars as well as rights groups say the toll is much higher.

IS has lost most of its territory since it declared a caliphate and seized large swathes of Syria and Iraq in 2014.

An Amnesty International report released earlier this month described the level of destruction in Raqqa, one of many areas touched by the Syrian conflict, as "beyond anything" researchers have seen in "decades of war".

The rights group said the US may have committed war crimes in its battle to drive IS out of Raqqa.

In Syria IS has been pushed back by separate offensives - one by Russia-backed regime troops and another by the US-backed and mainly Kurdish Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) alliance.

IS still holds pockets of eastern Syria in desert regions along the Iraqi border.

Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi declared victory over the group in December.

More than 350,000 people have been killed since the Syrian civil war began in 2011, mostly at the regime's hands.

Agencies contributed to this report.

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