US-led airstrikes against ISIS ‘kill dozens of civilians’ in northern Syria

Middle East, News, US May 2, 2015 , by IRIA No Comments

Human rights group said death toll, now at 52, from Friday’s attack was the highest civilian loss in a single attack by US and Arab forces since air raids started

U.S.-led airstrikes, on a village in Syria’s northern province of Aleppo, killed at least 52 civilians including seven children, a monitoring group said on Saturday.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a UK-based group, says Birmahle village was hit on Friday and that some people were still trapped in rubble.

“Air strikes by the coalition early on Friday on the village of Birmahle in Aleppo province killed 52 civilians,” Rami Abdel Rahman, head of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, told media.

Seven children were killed, and 13 people were still unaccounted for, the group said.

The Pentagon, however, said it could not confirm the report. U.S. Central Command spokesman Col. Patrick Ryder told media there was “no information to corroborate allegations that coalition airstrikes resulted in civilian casualties.”

The Britain-based Observatory said the raid had mistakenly struck civilians in a village on the eastern banks of the Euphrates River in Aleppo province, killing members of at least six families.

The village lies close to a front line where Islamic State fighters have been clashing with Kurdish and other rival rebel factions.

“But Birmahle is only civilians, with no [ISIS] positions and no clashes,” he said.

Abdel Rahman said “not a single [ISIS] fighter” was killed in the strikes on the village, but that raids on a nearby town had killed at least seven jihadis.

ISIS, a jihadist group seeking to establish a caliphate in Iraq and northern Syria, controls swathes of territory on both sides of the border.

The U.S.-led airstrikes have had little impact on the hardline ISIS, slowing its advances but failing to weaken it in areas it controls. The group has built its own government in Syria’s city of Raqqa, where it is most powerful.

Washington and its allies say their aim is to support what they call moderate rebels fighting against both Syrian President Bashar Assad and ISIS.

Earlier this month, the Observatory said the US-led air campaign had killed more than 2,000 people in total, including at least 1,922 IS fighters.

U.S.-led strikes had killed at least 66 civilians in Syria from the start of the raids on Sept. 23 until Friday’s strike, which brought the total to at least 118. The campaign has also killed nearly 2,000 ISIS fighters, the Observatory said.