The UK-based monitoring group Airwars has concluded that 74 civilians – now that a 14-year-old girl has died of her wounds – have died, but Chris Woods, the group’s lead researcher, said the total could be as many as 203.
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Gen. Joseph Votel, who heads U.S. Central Command, which oversees operations in the Middle East, said Thursday that the intelligence haul was “extraordinarily important”.
They are backed by air strikes launched by the US-led coalition fighting IS in Syria and Iraq. More than 520 U.S. airstrikes since 21 May have killed between 229 and 425 civilians overall.
The documents were acquired during operations just outside the town of Manbij in the country’s north, Iraq-based us military spokesman Col. Chris Garver was cited as saying by Reuters.
In a statement, the US military confirmed that the airstrikes were carried out by the coalition in the area in the last 24 hours and said it would continue the investigation and then decide the next step.
This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed.
Manbij has strategic value for another reason: it provides a pathway for Isis to exfiltrate fighters through Turkey to the outside world.
At least 28 more civilians were killed in the latest incident, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, including women and children.
On Wednesday, the United States military announced that it would formally investigate an air strike on July 19, in the nearby village of Tokkhar, which left at least 56 civilians dead. “It just goes to show how the self-proclaimed caliphate is not like any other organization we’ve dealt with before”, he said.
Earlier this month, on July 19, suspected US airstrikes killed scores of civilians in al-Tokhar village near Manbij.
Garver said last week that the jihadists had been mounting exceptionally fierce resistance in Manbij, which is being besieged by US-backed Syrian forces.
The Defense Department has since buckled down on transparency surrounding its campaign against ISIS, and routinely releases figures detailing where, when and how many civilians have been killed by its airstrikes against ISIS strongholds in Iraq and Syria.
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Newsweek identifies the fighters who have been capturing this material as members of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), a “coalition of Kurdish and Arab fighters”, supported by airstrikes and special forces operations from the US -led coalition.
