A day after announcing a formal inquiry into what watchdogs call the United States’ worst civilian casualty incident in its war against the Islamic State militant group, the USA military said that more civilians may have been killed in another airstrike around the same Syrian city.
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SOHR also said that it had obtained information that 13 others were killed, but it was not certain if they were civilians or members of the Islamic State group.
The US military is opening a formal investigation into airstrikes in Syria earlier this month after a Syrian rights group reported that dozens of civilians were killed, a Defense Department spokesman said Wednesday.
After helping Iraqi forces capture Fallujah from ISIS in western Iraq last month, the USA -led coalition’s focus has been on liberating what is known as the “Manbij pocket” from ISIS.
He said it sheds new light on how the Islamic State has used Manbij as a “strategic hub” for welcoming, training, indoctrinating and dispatching foreign fighters.
On July 19, as many as 56 civilians were killed in Manbej by French strikes, part of the US -led coalition, according to local media.
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It is conducting a second “credibility assessment” that an attack on July 23 also killed noncombatants.
Garver said coalition forces battling ISIS have gathered over 10,000 different items holding valuable information, such as thumb drives, laptops, textbooks and notebooks from the battlefield.
United Nations special envoy for Syria Staffan de Mistura estimates that over 400,000 people have been killed in the conflict.
Earlier in the day, CENTCOM released ” results of several civilian casualty assessments”, which confirmed civilian casualties had taken place in six separate U.S. airstrikes in Iraq and Syria.
At the moment, the main coalition effort is centered on recapturing the Manbij pocket in northern Syria, the last jihadist-held territory bordering Turkey.
Garver said last week that ISIL had been mounting exceptionally fierce resistance in Manbij, which is being besieged by US-backed Syrian forces.
“This is a complicated situation, and we will continue to apply the rigor that we always do in terms of minimizing the risk to civilians, but we are supporting (SDF) forces because this is a critical moment in this campaign”, Cook said.
That offensive is being led by the Syrian Democratic Forces, an Arab-Kurdish coalition.
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Commenting on the CENTCOM statement, White House deputy press secretary Eric Schultz said on Friday that “they’ll see if additional action is necessary”, without elaborating.
