AIN ISSA, Syria — US-backed forces pressed offensives on strongholds of Daesh (the so-called IS) in Syria and Iraq, as an air strike by the American-led coalition reportedly killed 20 civilians near the Syrian city of Raqa.
Supported by coalition air raids, Iraqi forces have pushed into IS’s Mosul stronghold and a Kurdish-Arab militia alliance has been advancing on the militants’ de facto Syrian capital Raqa. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said Wednesday that a coalition strike overnight had hit the Daesh-held village of Al-Heisha, about 40 km north of Raqa.
Rami Abdul Rahman, the head of the Britain-based monitoring group, said nine women and two children were among the 20 civilians killed and that 32 others had been wounded.
The Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), the militia alliance that Washington is supporting in the assault, denied the civilian deaths.
“There is no such thing, and any such claims are Daesh news,” SDF spokeswoman Jihan Sheikh Ahmed said.
Colonel John Dorrian, a spokesman for the coalition, said it appeared there had been strikes in the area.
“After an initial assessment... the coalition confirms it did conduct strikes in the area described in the allegation,” he said.
“However, more specific information is needed to conclusively determine responsibility” for civilian casualties.
The Observatory said the latest deaths brought the number of civilians killed since US-led air strikes in Syria began in September 2014 to 680, including 169 children.
Meanwhile the Pentagon said late Wednesday that US air strikes in both Syria and Iraq may have killed 119 civilians since 2014, a figure far lower than estimates by a number of monitoring groups.
Some 200 families had fled Al-Heisha, according to an SDF official.
“Daesh fighters brought heavy weapons to our village and stayed among us so that if there were strikes they would hit us,” 45-year-old Saada Al-Aboud said after fleeing the town.
“They wouldn’t let us leave. We had to escape by running out into the fields, with our children and old people. What else could we do? We left everything behind.”
The SDF launched the drive toward Raqa on Saturday, upping pressure on the jihadists three weeks after Iraqi forces began their assault on Mosul.
Raqa and Mosul are the last major cities in Syria and Iraq under Daesh control, after the militants suffered losses that greatly reduced the size of the self-styled “caliphate” they declared in mid-2014 following their seizure of large parts of both countries.
The US-led coalition, which launched its air campaign against Daesh two years ago, hopes that driving the group from the two cities will deal it a knockout blow.
The SDF has been pushing south from areas near the Turkish border toward Raqa, seizing a string of villages and moving to positions about 35 km from the city.
An AFP correspondent east of Ain Issa, the main staging point for the offensive, said coalition aircraft could be seen on Wednesday carrying out repeated air strikes in the distance and that Daesh fighters were shelling SDF positions.
Elsewhere in Syria, the Observatory said, eight civilians were killed in rebel rocket attacks on the Furqan and university districts of government-held western Aleppo, while state news agency SANA gave a death toll of six, with students among those killed.
Eight more civilians were killed on Wednesday in air strikes on a village in Idlib province of northwest Syria, according to the Observatory. — AFP
