It said four coalition warplanes struck a Syrian army post with nine rockets late Sunday, killing three soldiers and injuring 13.
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The US-run combined joint task force said it had “no indication any Syrian soldiers were even near our strikes” and that it would investigate any allegations of “collateral damage”.
“We know for sure that the strike was not launched by Russian planes because Moscow is an ally of al-Assad’s regime”, Observatory chief Rami Abdel-Rahman told dpa.
Monitoring group the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights says the camp is near the village of Ayyash.
A US military official, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue, said later in the day that the Pentagon is “certain” that a Russian warplane carried out the attack. But coalition envoy Brett McGurk, in a post on Twitter, insisted there were no strikes within “55km [about 35 miles] of claimed incident on Syrian base”.
The city, in the province also called Deir el-Zour, is mainly in the hands of the Islamic State but the Syrian government still holds some parts of the city.
“Unlike al-Qaida, the Islamic State has not been dependent on money from foreign donors, to avoid leaving it vulnerable to their influence”, said Columb Strack, senior analyst at IHS, and lead analyst for the IHS Conflict Monitor.
Russian Federation is waging its own aerial campaign in support of President Bashar al-Assad, which has hit some ISIS targets, but the United States and its allies say most of Vladimir Putin’s raids have hit other foreign-backed rebel groups.
USA officials quickly denied the accusation, which if true would mark the first time the coalition had targeted Syrian army units since its air campaign to roll back the advances of Islamic State militants that began more than a year ago. The row erupted just days after British RAF jets joined air strikes in Syria, and comes amid warnings that the conflict in the country is becoming an increasingly risky global proxy war that has pitted the US, Europe, Saudi Arabia and Turkey against Syria, Russia and Iran.
However, member of the opposition Syrian National Coalition, Samir al-Nashar, said the conference had been postponed to Wednesday for further preparations.
“We are not at war with the Assad regime and have no reason to target the Syrian Army”, the official said.
In Iraq, 11 strikes targeted ISIS near four cities, striking six tactical units, 13 fighting positions and other targets, the statement added.
The foreign ministry wrote a letter to the UN Security Council and secretary general, in which they said, “The Syrian Arab Republic strongly condemns this flagrant aggression by the USA led coalition forces, which blatantly violates the objectives of the UN charter”. Turkey said it would not withdraw troops who arrived last week despite Iraq warning it to do so within 48 hours.
The province is a key region for IS – it’s home to much of its oil wealth in Syria, and it links the group’s capital in Raqqa with territory under its control in western Iraq.
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The military source said the attack happened Sunday night and hit several buildings used as weapons depots and an army training camp, damaging two tanks.
