Syria has appealed to the United Nations claiming that 45 civilians were killed and 50 injured in US-led coalition airstrikes outside the city of Manbij near Aleppo on Thursday.
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Coalition advisers, knowing that Manbij served as a strategic hub for Islamic State, specifically described to fighters the kind of digital and other material to gather as they battled the group’s forces, Garver said.
U.S. Central Command, which is responsible for U.S. forces in the Middle East, says in a statement Thursday that the American-backed coalition had conducted airstrikes in the area of Manbij (MAN-behj) during the past 24 hours.
However, despite the successful operation against ISIS in the city, the coalition has been criticized over an airstrike which killed innocent civilians on July 19.
Col. Christopher Garver, spokesman for the USA -led coalition in Baghdad, told reporters by teleconference Wednesday that the documents also offer a glimpse into how the militants organize new recruits.
“After a thorough review of the facts and circumstances for each allegation, the evidence indicates six separate US airstrikes in Iraq and Syria from July 28, 2015, to April 29, 2016, have unfortunately resulted in the death of 14 civilians and injuries to an additional civilian”, the statement said.
Syrian activists say the Islamic State group has captured a village in northern Syria from a US -backed, Kurdish-led fighters and killed 24 civilians there.
This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed.
On 31 May, the SDF supported by U.S. coalition airstrikes, mounted an offensive to recapture Manbij from the terror group.
The U.S. -backed Syrian Democratic Forces, made up of mostly Kurdish fighters, have reached the outskirts of Manbij but now face dug-in Islamic State fighters.
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights also reported that air strikes had hit a hospital and a centre for first responders in Kafr Takhareem village, in a rural part of Idlib province.
In another strike on April 26 near Qayyarah in Iraq, one civilian died when a motorcycle “unexpectedly appeared in the target area after the U.S. aircraft had already released its weapon”, Centcom said.
Elsewhere, the Observatory said IS militants had recaptured the nearby village of al-Bouweir and killed 24 civilians.
The US has rejected calls by Syrian opposition figures after Tokkhar to halt the bombings for the sake of thousands of civilians trapped in Manbij, as it believes the fall of the city is critical to the overriding objective of capturing Raqqa.
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The Pentagon has acknowledged killing 55 civilians in its almost two-year bombing campaign against the Islamic State group in Iraq and Syria.
