At least 56 civilians, including 11 children, have been killed in US-led air strikes against areas in Syria held by the Islamic State of Syria and the Levant group (ISIL, also known as ISIS), a monitoring group said.
“We believe that the raids which were carried out Tuesday were by US [or] allied planes, but it was by mistake,” Observatory director Rami Abdel-Rahman told DPA news agency.
The Manbij area has seen intense US-led airstrikes in support of Kurdish-led forces who are trying to seize the city from ISIL, so as to block the armed group’s access to the nearby Turkish border.
The Observatory on Monday said that 104 civilians had been killed in airstrikes since the Democratic Forces of Syria (DFS) launched their campaign in the area at the end of May.
There was no immediate comment from the coalition, the Associated Press reported.
The SDF, an alliance of Arab and Kurdish fighters backed by the US, launched an offensive against ISIL to retake the city of Manbij late last month.
They have besieged the town and are advancing to the city centre under the cover of air strikes by the US-led international coalition.
ISIL has held the city since 2014, the year that the armed group seized control of large parts of Syria and neighbouring Iraq and declared its “caliphate”.
Aleppo
Also on Monday, Chris Gunness, spokesman for the United Nations agency that supports Palestinian refugees (UNRWA), said a driver who works for the agency in Syria was killed after suffering a shrapnel wound in the northern city of Aleppo.
Gunness said Yaser Mahmoud Shuaeeb, a 45-year-old father of six children, died on Sunday.
Aleppo has witnessed some of the worst fighting in Syria over the past months. On Sunday, government forces besieged rebel-held neighbourhoods of the contested city.
Gunness said that UNRWA reported two other incidents on Sunday.
In one, a mortar shell landed 600 metres from the UN agency’s office in Damascus. In the other, a missile hit close to the Nairab refugee camp south of Aleppo. The incidents caused no injuries, he said.
The death toll in the Syrian conflict, which began with mostly unarmed demonstrations against President Bashar al-Assad in March 2011, has risen to more than 280,000 people, while half the country’s population have been forced from their homes, according to UN estimates.
Staffan de Mistura, UN special envoy to Syria, estimated last month that the actual death toll could be as high as 400,000 people.
http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2016/07/led-air-strikes-kill-21-civilians-syria-160719045329897.html