Sporadic clashes between Islamic Sate militants and U.S.-backed fighters erupted on Friday in a northern, IS-held Syrian town after the extremists ignored a 48-hour offer from the day before to leave the besieged town without a fight, opposition activists and a Kurdish official said.
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In a statement distributed Thursday, UNICEF says dozens of children were among those killed in and around the town of Manbij, where airstrikes blamed on the U.S.-led coalition killed scores of people in the past few days.
“We were already preparing this news story to go out before [the Tokhar attack] because our researchers were so alarmed by the high number of casualty reports relating to Manbij”, Woods said in a phone interview Wednesday.
Carter said this strategy will be discussed at the joint meeting of the defense and foreign ministers to be hosted Thursday by U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry.
On social media, people expressed outrage and despair at the deaths, with #PrayForSyria trending on Twitter.
The Syrian foreign ministry said Tuesday’s airstrike on the village of Toukhar north of Manbij was carried out by French forces, while Monday’s strike was by US jets.
“To protect civilian lives and property and to protect the town from destruction, we announce that we accept the initiative under which besieged ISIL members would leave with their individual light weapons”, said the Manbij Military Council, a member of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) coalition that is fighting against ISIL for the town.
This “gives us valuable insight into stopping the flow of foreign fighters into the region”, coalition spokesman US Army Col Christopher Garver told reporters.
“We believe that such incidents indicate a major loophole in the current operational rules followed by the global coalition in conducting strikes in populated areas”, al-Abdah said in the letter.
The US-led coalition of more than 60 nations has been conducting anti-Daesh airstrikes in Syria and Iraq since the summer of 2014.
“No matter where they are in Syria or under whose control they live – absolutely nothing justifies attacks on children”, Hanaa Singer, UNICEF representative in Syria, said in a statement.
Tuesday’s airstrike is not the first time the U.S. may have mistakenly targeted a civilian area. “The group said the claims were being investigated and if they warranted further investigation, “[the Coalition] will then determine the next appropriate step”.
Coalition president Anas al-Abdah said the alliance was responsible for the “crimes” in Manbij, which he said killed at least 125 civilians.
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Chris Woods of the monitoring group Airwars viewed these reports as particularly troubling because the United States and its coalition partners have generally taken great pains to avoid civilian casualties, unlike the Russians and Syrian government forces.
