US-led coalition strike kills 23 civilians in Syria

Rights groups say actual figure much higher

Beirut, May 15: An air strike by the US-led coalition killed 23 civilians on Monday in a Syrian town held by the Islamic State group on the border with Iraq, a monitor said.

The deaths came after 12 women were killed in a strike by the US-led coalition fighting ISIS in the east of Syria’s Raqa province on Sunday, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

The Monday strike hit Albu Kamal early morning, Observatory director Rami Abdel Rahman said.

“They hit a residential area at 3 am while people were sleeping, causing the high toll,” he said. He added that ISIS was using apartments in the area targeted as local headquarters.

The Observatory said that strike hit vehicles carrying farmworkers home from fields in the afternoon.

ISIS has lost swathes of the territory it once held in Raqa province, though it still holds Raqa city and some areas to the east.

A US-backed alliance of Kurdish and Arab fighters known as the Syrian Democratic Forces is battling

towards Raqa city, the jihadist group’s most important remaining Syrian bastion.

The US military said in May that coalition strikes in Syria and Iraq had

“unintentionally” killed 352 civilians since it launched operations against ISIS in 2014.

Rights groups claim the actual figure is much higher. — AFP