Civilians bear brunt as fresh Syria strikes kill 35

BEIRUT — A fresh wave of airstrikes in eastern Syria killed at least 35 civilians including women and children, state media and a monitoring group reported Friday, as the U.N. human rights chief said civilians are increasingly paying the price of escalating attacks against the Islamic State group in the country.

Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein’s comments came hours after airstrikes on the IS-held eastern Syrian town of Mayadeen, where airstrikes Thursday night killed dozens, many of them family members of IS fighters. The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the airstrikes were conducted by the U.S.-led coalition fighting IS. It added that the airstrikes began around sunset Thursday as people were heading to mosques for evening prayers and continued until the early hours of Friday.

“The same civilians who are suffering indiscriminate shelling and summary executions by ISIL, are also falling victim to the escalating airstrikes, particularly in the northeastern governorates of” Raqqa and Deir el-Zour, al-Hussein said in a statement from Geneva, using another acronym for IS. “Unfortunately, scant attention is being paid by the outside world to the appalling predicament of the civilians trapped in these areas.”

The airstrikes came as the U.S. military said it killed three IS fighters in attacks in Syria and Iraq over the past month.

The Observatory later said a total of 106 people have been killed in Mayadeen since Thursday evening, including IS fighters and 42 children.

The monitoring group said among the 106 were 80 people who perished when a four-story building housing families of IS fighters from Syria and north Africa was destroyed in an airstrike. More than 20, including 10 IS fighters, were killed in other airstrikes that hit the municipality building among other places.

Syria’s state news agency SANA also said 35 civilians, most of them women and children, were killed in the airstrikes, also blaming the coalition.

There was no immediate comment from the coalition. It is not unusual to have conflicting casualty figures in the immediate aftermath of airstrikes in Syria.

Reports of deaths among civilians have been on the rise as the fighting against IS intensifies in northern and eastern Syria.

Omar Abu Laila, a Europe-based opposition activist who is originally from eastern Syria, said Mayadeen residents were urged through mosque loudspeakers to head to hospitals and clinics to donate blood. He also said more airstrikes occurred in the early hours Friday. He added that about a dozen people were killed and that he is still waiting for casualty figures to emerge following the destruction of the building housing families of IS fighters.

Al-Hussein, the U.N. human rights chief, in a dramatic appeal on Friday urged all parties conducting strikes against the Islamic State group in Syria to take greater care differentiating between military and civilian targets.