Coalition denies targeting civilians

Blast in rebel-held Idlib kills 3

BEIRUT, Oct 21, (Agencies): The USled coalition denied Sunday that it targeted civilians in a recent deadly raid in eastern Syria, insisting instead that it had fired on an Islamic State group command post.

Air strikes on Thursday and Friday on the village of Sousa killed 41 civilians, 10 of them children, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

The Britain-based monitor blamed the coalition, which is backing an offensive launched last month by a Kurdish-Arab alliance against IS’s last redoubt in the country’s east.

The majority of those killed in the strikes were family members of IS fighters, Observatory chief Rami Abdel Rahman told AFP on Sunday.

“Only six are Syrians, the others are mostly Iraqi,” he said.

The coalition said it did not carry out any bombing runs on Friday, but that a raid on Thursday targeted a mosque being used as a “command and control centre”.

“Our assessment is only ISIS fighters were present at the command centre at the time of the strike,” Colonel Sean Ryan said in response to questions from AFP sent by email.

He said “12 DAESH terrorists” were killed in the raid, using an Arabic acronym to refer to IS.

“If there are credible claims of possible civilian casualties, they will be investigated,” he added.

According to the Observatory, Thursday’s strike killed 18 civilians, including seven children, all of whom were related to IS jihadists.

It said 11 IS fighters were also killed in the raid.

IS overran large swathes of Syria and neighbouring Iraq in 2014, proclaiming a “caliphate” across the land it controlled.

But the jihadist group has since lost most of it to various offensives in both countries.

In Syria, the group has seen its presence reduced to parts of the vast Badia desert and a pocket that includes Sousa in the eastern province of Deir Ezzor along the border with Iraq.

Since 2014 the US-led coalition has acknowledged direct responsibility for more than 1,100 civilian deaths in Syria and Iraq, but rights groups put the number killed much higher.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights says coalition strikes in Syria alone have killed more than 3,300 civilians.

Syria’s war has killed more than 360,000 people since it erupted in 2011 with the brutal repression of antigovernment protests.

A Syrian war monitor and an opposition paramedics group say an explosion in the rebel-held northwestern city of Idlib has killed at least three people and wounded others.

The Civil Defense, also known as the White Helmets, said Sunday’s blast occurred near a mosque killing three people, including a child.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said four people were killed, including a child and a foreign fighter whose nationality was not immediately clear.

The Observatory said the blast occurred in al-Qusour neighborhood that is inhabited by many fighters from Uzbekistan and China.

Idlib province is the last major stronghold of insurgents and home to many foreign fighters with al-Qaeda linked groups.

A deal between Russia and Turkey last month averted a government offensive on the area.

By reopening a key land crossing with Jordan this month, the Syrian regime is inching towards a return to trade with the wider region as it looks to boost its war-ravaged economy.

The government of President Bashar al-Assad took back control of the Nassib border post in July from rebels as part of a military offensive that reclaimed swathes of the south of the country.

Syria’s international trade has plummeted during the seven-year civil war, and its foreign reserves have been almost depleted.

The reopening of Nassib after a three-year hiatus, on Oct 15, is a political victory for the Damascus regime, said Sam Heller of the International Crisis Group.

It is “a step towards reintegrating with Syria’s surroundings economically and recapturing the country’s traditional role as a conduit for regional trade,” he said.

The Nassib crossing reopens a direct land route between Syria and Jordan, but also a passage via its southern neighbour to Iraq to the east, and the Gulf to the south.

“For the Syrian government, reopening Nassib is a step towards normalisation with Jordan and the broader region, and a blow to US-led attempts to isolate Damascus,” Heller said.

International pressure and numerous rounds of peace talks have failed to stem the fighting in Syria, and seven years in the regime has gained the military upper hand in the conflict.

Assad’s forces now control nearly two-thirds of the country, after a series of Russia-backed offensives against rebels and jihadists.

Syria faces a mammoth task to revive its battered economy.

The country’s exports plummeted by more than 90 percent in the first four years of the conflict alone, from $7.9 billion to $631 million, according to a World Bank report last year.

The Syria Report, an economic weekly, said Nassib’s reopening would reconnect Syria with an “important market” in the Gulf.

But, it warned, “it is unlikely Syrian exports will recover anywhere close to the 2011 levels in the short and medium terms because the country’s production capacity has been largely destroyed”.

For now, at least, Nassib’s reopening is good news for Syrian tradesmen forced into costlier, lengthier maritime shipping since 2015.

Among them, Syrian businessman Farouk Joud was looking forward to being able to finally import goods from Jordan and the United Arab Emirates via land.

Before 2015, “it would take maximum three days for us to receive goods, but via the sea it takes a whole month,” he told AFP.