ZCZC
BFF-33
SYRIA-CONFLICT-KURDS
Six civilians dead in US-led strike on IS in Syria: monitor
BEIRUT, Jan 19, 2019 (BSS/AFP) – Four children were among at least six
civilians killed in a US-led air strike on the Islamic State group’s
embattled enclave in eastern Syria, a monitor said on Saturday.
The Friday strike on the Euphrates Valley village of Baghouz killed 10 IS
fighters as well as the six civilians, the Syrian Observatory for Human
Rights said.
There was no immediate comment from the US-led coalition.
Baghouz is part of an enclave of less than 15 square kilometres (less than
six square miles) that is all that is left of IS territory in Syria following
a gruelling Kurdish-led offensive launched with coalition support last May.
The Britain-based Observatory said the coalition had stepped up its air
strikes against IS since the jihadists killed 19 people, four of them
Americans, in a suicide bombing on a restaurant in the flashpoint northern
town of Manbij on Wednesday.
“The strikes are continuing, and have intensified since the Manbij
attack,” Observatory chief Rami Abdel Rahman told AFP.
The US losses were the biggest since Washington deployed troops in Syria in
2014 in support of the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces.
Previously it had reported just two combat losses in separate incidents.
The Manbij bombing rekindled controversy triggered by President Donald
Trump last month with his surprise announcement of a full withdrawal from
Syria.
The US president justified the order with the assertion that the jihadists
had now been largely defeated” in Syria, a claim that the attack threw into
renewed question.
BSS/AFP/FI/ 1822 hrs