A single attack on a village last week killed at least 74 named civilians, mostly women and children, and potentially more than 50 others, according to multiple observers.
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The IS-linked Aamaq news agency said 10 SDF fighters were killed in fighting in Manbij over the past day. It takes on average seven months for the release of a redacted version of the findings, which inevitably minimize the scale of the war crime and attribute it to inadvertent errors.
The two U.S. goals in Syria have been ending the violence that has already claimed up to 400,000 lives, according to United Nations estimates, and seeking a political process to replace Assad, who President Barack Obama has said “must go”.
If the airstrikes prove to be from U.S. jets, the Manbij incident would be the highest civilian death toll for a single strike operation in the two-year war against ISIS. The worldwide coalition was believed to have conducted the air strikes, the group said.
Amnesty International called on the coalition to redouble its efforts to prevent civilian deaths and to investigate possible violations of international humanitarian law. While the U.S. military command in Baghdad suggests it might be as low as 10 dead civilians, Airwars’ chief investigator, Chris Woods, told the Guardian the credible maximum is likely to be 120-150 men, women and children dead.
Last week, a separate coalition attack targeting the Tokhar area of Manbij killed at least 56 Syrian civilians, according to SOHR and local activists, in one of the highest death tolls from coalition air strikes yet.
The IS claimed the attack in a statement circulated on social media, calling it “a response to the crimes committed by the crusader coalition aircraft” in the town of Manbij, a bastion of the group in Syria’s Aleppo province.
It was also unclear if the Al-Ghandour strikes involved an airstrike reported on Thursday by the U.S. Central Command, which is responsible for U.S. forces in the Middle East.
The town lies 23 kilometres (14 miles) northwest of Manbij, a strategic waypoint between Turkey and the jihadist stronghold of Raqa.
US officials believe the Islamic State terrorists who carried out recent deadly attacks in Paris and Brussels moved through Manbij on their way to Europe.
Woods told the Guardian that he assesses the devastation in Manbij to stretch beyond Tokkhar.
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Rights groups and civilians trapped in opposition-held neighborhoods in eastern Aleppo have reacted critically to Russia’s plan, saying it does not guarantee safe passage or give residents a choice of where they flee to.
