On Wednesday, American military officials announced that USA -backed Arab and Kurdish fighters in Syria have seized an enormous trove of data from various Islamic State strongholds, weighing in at over four terabytes in size.
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The US-led coalition fighting the Daesh terror group aims to open a new front in southern Syria in addition to its ongoing offensive in the northeast, US Defence Secretary Ashton Carter said Wednesday.
On Thursday night, US Central Command (CENTCOM) acknowledged that the airstrikes “may have resulted in civilian casualties”, but did not name a figure, pending a likely future investigation.
“The material, gathered as fighters moved from village to village surrounding the town of Manbij, includes notebooks, laptops, USB drives, and even advanced math and science textbooks rewritten with pro-Islamic State word problems”, Reuters reports, citing USA military spokesman Col. Chris Garver.
ISIL, Cook said, “has proudly claimed responsibility for attacks just this month that have killed hundreds of innocent civilians, including the July 4th attack in Baghdad that killed more than 140 people, and a bombing just this week in Al-Qamishli, Syria, that killed more than 40”.
Meanwhile, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights also reported the airstrike, saying seven children were among those killed.
“If the information supporting the report is determined to be credible, we will then determine the next appropriate step”, the statement released Thursday said.
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said airstrikes in Kafr Takhareem village in Idlib hit a hospital and a center for civil defense volunteers.
“We can confirm the Coalition conducted airstrikes in the area in the last 24 hours”.
Garver said the intelligence has not yielded links to any of those involved in recent violent attacks in the West.
Hamoud Almousa, a founding member of Raqqa is Being Slaughtered Silently, an activist group, said IS sought retribution from the village for “not defending Islam” when the SDF initially drove out IS earlier this summer. But campaign groups that keep a tally of the war’s civilian toll, including Amnesty and Airwars, say the real total is at least 10 times that number.
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SANA said that a “massacre” occurred in the village of al-Ghandoura and “on the heels of this appalling crime, ISIS brutally murdered 24 civilians from the locals of al-Bweir village”, which is also located near Manjib.
