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Air strike kills 10 civilians in northeast Syria: monitor
BEIRUT, June 12, 2018 (BSS/AFP) – An air raid on a village in northeast Syria
held by the Islamic State jihadist group killed at least 10 civilians
including three children on Tuesday, a Britain-based monitor said.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the strikes on Tal al-Shair in
the northeastern province of Hasakeh were carried out by the US-led coalition
fighting IS in Syria and neighbouring Iraq since 2014.
There was no immediate confirmation from the coalition of the strike, the
latest in a series of raids to have reportedly caused civilian casualties in
the area in past weeks.
Tal al-Shair lies in a small pocket still held by IS fighters near the
Iraqi border in the south of Hasakeh, where a Kurdish-Arab alliance backed by
the coalition has been battling the jihadists in recent days.
According to the Observatory, a coalition air strike last week killed 11
civilians in the same IS-held area, and another 12 lost their lives in
coalition raids on June 1.
The coalition told AFP it was carrying out an investigation into the June 1
allegation.
Earlier this month, it admitted to nine more civilians deaths, bringing to
892 the total number of civilians it acknowledges to have killed since it
intervened in Iraq and Syria.
Other monitors like the Observatory and Airwars say the toll is much
higher.
The Britain-based Observatory, which relies on sources inside Syria, says
it determines whose planes carried out strikes according to type, location,
flight patterns and munitions involved.
IS has lost most of the cross-border caliphate it declared in 2014.
In Syria it was pushed back by separate offensives — one by Russia-backed
regime troops and another by the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces alliance.
But the jihadists still hold slithers of eastern Syria and have a presence
in the vast Badiya desert running from the centre of the country to the
border with Iraq.
More than 350,000 people have been killed in Syria’s war since it started
in 2011 with a brutal crackdown on anti-government protests.
It has since spiralled into a complex conflict involving world powers and
foreign jihadists.
BSS/AFP/RY/1845 hrs