As NPR’s Alison Meuse told our Newscast unit, reports suggest the strike near the northern town of Manbij is the “largest civilian death toll since the intervention began”.
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Rodi Said / Reuters An airstrike on Manbij last week.
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights is reporting fighting in the town of Manbij Friday.
Coalition forces have been carrying out bombing campaigns in the area as part of a longer term plan to take back Raqqa, the Islamic State’s de facto capital.
An estimated 70,000 people are thought to be trapped in the town and its surrounding villages.
The air strikes in the area are aimed at supporting a ground operation by the Syria Democratic Forces (SDF), a Kurdish and Arab alliance which is trying to drive Isis out of Manbij.
Moreover, a group of Syrian activists have started a campaign under the banner “Manbij is being exterminated”, supported by the Yusuf Qaradawi, the chairman of International Union of Muslim Scholars, who has justified suicide bombers in the past. Like others interviewed for this article, he would not give his full name for reasons of security. Pictures on social media purporting to be from the scene showed dust-covered corpses of two young children next to rubble.
The Pentagon has acknowledged 41 civilian deaths in its strikes in both Syria and Iraq since 2014, but the Observatory has reported almost 600 civilians killed in US-led raids in Syria alone.
On Wednesday, the Syrian Foreign Ministry wrote to United Nations secretary-general Ban Ki Moon and the security council, demanding they condemn the bombing of al-Tukhar and blaming France.
Syrian Democratic Forces spokesman Sharfan Darwish insisted that Islamic State had been present in the village and that the death toll was exaggerated.
“We monitored the movements of Daesh”.
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. “How can 200 civilians be in two houses?”
USA military investigators are looking into claims of the mass killing in Manbij.
“When a missile struck the launcher, that explosion caused the most damage”.
The head of delegation for the International Committee of the Red Cross in Syria described the situation as “devastating and overwhelming”, with heavy and indiscriminate shelling and an “untold numbers of civilian casualties”.
At least 56 civilians were killed in strikes in Toukhan, north of the Isis stronghold of Manbij on Tuesday, and 21 were killed in air strikes on Manbij itself on Monday, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group.
A statement by the group called it a last-ditch effort to protect civilian lives and the “only and last” opportunity for ISIS militants to “leave the town alive”.
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Meanwhile, they are pressing their allies to increase their involvement in the worldwide anti-ISIS coalition.
