Group: Syria airstrikes kill scores of civilians
ISTANBUL — Airstrikes on an Islamic State-held town in eastern Syria last week killed dozens of civilians, monitoring groups said, notably in an alleged raid on a building that housed family members of the extremist fighters.
The strikes on alMayadin, which took place Thursday evening and early Friday, were carried out by aircraft that locals identified as being from the U.S.-led coalition against IS, according to the Britainbased Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
Capt. Jeff Davis, a Pentagon spokesman, said coalition forces conducted airstrikes in the area in Deir al-Zour province May 25 and 26.
“We are still assessing the results of those strikes," Capt. Davis said. “We take all allegations of civilian casualties seriously.”
According to the Observatory, the strikes comprised the deadliest such attack involving IS family members.
“By what right does the coalition kill women and children, even if they are family of Islamic State fighters?” asked Rami Abdul Rahman, head of the group.
If confirmed as coalition airstrikes, the bombardment in al-Mayadin would mark the latest in a string of U.S.-led attacks that have killed perhaps hundreds of civilians in Iraq and Syria in recent months.
The Pentagon on Thursday released an unclassified summary of its own investigation into a deadly raid on a residential building in the Iraqi city of Mosul, where IS fightersare holed up and battling Iraqi forces. The U.S. Central Command acknowledged that a U.S. strike killed more than 100 civilians there, but it blamed the high death toll on secondary explosions from IS weapons storedin the area.
Since President Donald Trump took office in January, “we are now seeing the emergence of clear trends,” said Chris Woods, director of Airwars, a group that tracks coalition strikes in Iraq and Syria. “We are seeing high civilian casualties where six months ago we would not. This is the clearest evidence yet that protections for civilians on the battlefield appear to have been scaled back.”
In a statement Friday, UnitedNations human rights chief Zeid Raad al-Hussein urged all air forces operating in Syria “to take much greatercare to distinguish between legitimate military targetsand civilians.”
“The same civilians who are suffering indiscriminate shelling and summary executions by [IS] are also falling victim to the escalating airstrikes,” he said. “The rising toll of civilian deaths and injuries already caused by airstrikes in Deir al-Zour and Raqqa suggests that insufficient precautions may have been taken in the attacks.”
The U.S. Central Command on Friday listed five strikes in Deir al-Zour, which it said destroyed “a command and control node, and an [IS] headquarters.”
Also Friday, the Central Command said that coalition strikes in al-Mayadin on April 27 and May 11 killed two IS commanders involved in planning the group’s attacks abroad.