U.S. says mosque hit in Syria was ISIS hub

BEIRUT — The U.S. military said Tuesday that it struck a mosque it believes had been used as an Islamic State control center, as American-allied Syrian forces battled the extremists in their last stronghold in eastern Syria amid reports of more civilian casualties.

The U.S.-led coalition said warplanes struck the mosque in the small town of Baghouz on Monday in support of the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces. It said the airstrike occurred as the Islamic State was using the mosque to direct attacks and employ suicide car bombs against the Syrian Democratic Forces.

“This mosque lost its protected status when ISIS deliberately chose to use it as a command and control center,” said the coalition’s deputy commander, Maj. Gen. Christopher Ghika, using an acronym for the Islamic State.

Hundreds of mostly foreign Islamic State fighters are believed to remain in Baghouz and nearby areas, where the U.S.-led coalition began its final push Saturday after months of fighting. The Islamic State has been fighting back with suicide car bombs, sniper fire and booby traps, and it has been using civilians as human shields, slowing the U.S.-backed fighters’ advance.

Syrian state media reported that about 70 people were killed or wounded in an airstrike by the U.S.-led coalition on the edge of Baghouz. It said the airstrike hit a settlement where hundreds of people were taking shelter from the fighting.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a war monitor, said seven children and eight women were killed late Monday in an airstrike near Baghouz. It was not immediately clear if they were referring to the same event.

Col. Sean Ryan, a coalition spokesman, said that “we are aware of open source reports of alleged civilian casualties. We take all allegations of civilian casualties seriously, and understand there is a lot of misinformation as well.”

He added that “there are multiple actors conducting strikes within the area, so we are looking into it.”

Syrian government forces and their allies have in the past shelled the Islamic State-held area. Iraqi forces have struck militant targets in Syria from across the border.

At least 20,000 civilians have fled the last sliver of Islamic State-controlled territory in just the past few weeks. The numbers have overwhelmed Kurdish-run camps in northeastern Syria, where humanitarian conditions are already dire amid a cold winter and meager resources.

Islamic State militants, who once controlled a selfstyled caliphate sprawling across large parts of Syria and neighboring Iraq, are now besieged from the north and east by Syrian Democratic Forces fighters, and they are hemmed in by the Euphrates River to the west and south. Syrian government forces and their allies are deployed on the river’s west bank.

The capture of Baghouz and nearby areas would mark the end of a four-year global campaign against the extremist group. U.S. President Donald Trump has said the group is all but defeated, and he announced in December that he would withdraw all American forces from Syria.

However, activists and residents in eastern Syria say the militants are still present in recaptured areas, where they are laying the groundwork for a future insurgency.

Syrian activists who closely follow the conflict said negotiations are underway between the Islamic State and the Syrian Democratic Forces to open a corridor for the extremists to leave the besieged area.