US claims Syria strike, denies targeting mosque

— The U.S. military says it carried out an air strike in northern Syria against an al-Qaida target, but denies deliberately targeting a mosque where at least 42 people were killed according to an independent monitor.

The U.S.-led coalition has been bombing jihadist groups in war-torn Syria for several years, with hundreds of civilians unintentionally killed in the country and in neighboring Iraq.

“We did not target a mosque, but the building that we did target — which was where the meeting took place — is about 50 feet (15 meters) from a mosque that is still standing,” said Colonel John J. Thomas, spokesman for U.S. Central Command.

According to a Centcom statement: “U.S. forces conducted an airstrike on an al-Qaida in Syria meeting location March 16 in Idlib, Syria, killing several terrorists.” The Centcom spokesman later clarified that the precise location of the strike was unclear -- but that it was the same one widely reported to have targeted the village mosque in Al-Jineh, in Aleppo province.

“We are going to look into any allegations of civilian casualties in relation to this strike,” he added, when asked about reports from the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights that 42 people had died in the attack on the village mosque, most of them civilians.

The head of the Britain-based Observatory Rami Abdel Rahman said “the raids by unidentified warplanes targeted a mosque in Aleppo province during evening prayers, killing 42 people, most of them civilians.”

“More than 100 people were wounded,” he said, adding that many were still trapped under the collapsed mosque in the village of Al-Jineh, just over 30 kilometers (20 miles) west of Aleppo.

The village is held by rebel and Islamist groups, but no jihadist factions are present.

Rescue workers struggled to pull survivors from rubble, and dozens of residents were still unaccounted for, the Observatory said. Abu Muhammed, a village resident, told AFP that he “heard powerful explosions when the mosque was hit. It was right after the prayer at a time when there is usually religious lessons for men in it.”