The U.S. -led coalition to defeat Islamic State in Iraq and Syria will investigate reports of civilian casualties in an air strike near Manbij, in northern Syria, U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter said on Wednesday.
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Backed by US -led coalition airstrikes, SDF fighters have encircled Manbij and clashed with IS militants inside the town but have so far avoided an all-out assault on the town to minimize civilian casualties.
The council is allied to the USA -backed Kurdish and Arab alliance known as the Syria Democratic Forces (SDF), which has been fighting ISIS in northern Syria with the support of air strikes from a US -led coalition.
Estimates of the death toll vary.
Syria’s foreign ministry blamed French forces for the airstrikes on Tokhar and U.S. forces for those in Manbij on Monday, though United States and French authorities would not say which of the coalition members had carried out bombings on those two days.
The global commitment produced by this alliance has been sparse so far, with the United States providing the vast majority of troops, especially in Syria, although France significantly increased its contributions after the ISIS attack on Paris.
The UN said there are almost half a million people in besieged areas in Syria and an estimated 4.5 million Syrians in so-called hard-to-reach areas.
FRENCH President Francois Hollande claimed yesterday that he did not know whether his country’s air force had killed 125 civilians by bombing a Syrian village on Tuesday.
“Civilians have.reportedly been killed if they leave their homes or attempt to flee”.
The Pentagon has acknowledged 41 civilian deaths in its strikes in both Syria and Iraq since 2014, but the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights has reported more than 450 civilian killed in USA -led raids in Syria alone. There was no immediate comment from Washington.
But since then, many more have died, and the number of fatalities due to airstrikes on Manbij’s al-Tukhar village is now at least 210, said Yousef Houran, a co-founder of the group and a resident of nearby Aleppo.
The attack supposedly took place in early on Tuesday morning, and the stray bomb hit a dwelling where around two hundred people were trying to shelter from the attack.
The photographs appeared genuine and corresponded to other Associated Press reporting of the events depicted.
“We’ll. continue to do all we can to protect civilians from harm”, he said.
The alleged accidental killing of at least 56 Syrian civilians in US-led airstrikes on Tuesday has sparked global outrage.
The French Foreign Ministry has said it does not recognize figures released by the Syrian government and would wait for the results of the investigation into the airstrike.
“Anyone responsible for violations of global humanitarian law must be brought to justice and victims and their families should receive full reparation”, Amnesty’s interim Middle East director Magdalena Mughrabi said. SNC President Anas al-Abdah said the airstrikes should stop while the incidents are investigated, according to a statement issued late Wednesday.
The US-led coalition of more than 60 nations has been conducting anti-Daesh airstrikes in Syria and Iraq since the summer of 2014.
The coalition has acknowledged conducting air strikes near Manbij recently, and said it was looking into the reports of civilian deaths.
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The Manbij area has seen intense battles between IS extremists and the Kurdish-led fighters, who have been advancing under the cover of intense airstrikes by the US -led coalition.
