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News ID: 50286
Publish Date : 20 February 2018 - 21:43

Over Dozen Civilians Killed in U.S. Strikes in Syria


DAMASCUS (Dispatches) – More than a dozen civilians have lost their lives after the U.S.-led coalition purportedly fighting the Daesh terrorist group carried out a series of aerial assaults in Syria’s eastern province of Dayr al-Zawr.
Local sources told Syria’s official news agency SANA that 16 people, including 9 women, were killed in the U.S.-led aerial attacks against residential buildings in al-Bahra village on Tuesday afternoon.
The sources noted that the death toll is expected to rise as some people had been critically wounded in the airstrikes.
The London-based Airwars organization, which tracks civilian deaths in U.S.-led airstrikes, reported earlier this year that a total of at least 5,961 civilians had been killed as a result of the attacks in Iraq and Syria.
The so-called Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) reported on November 23 last year that 2,759 civilians, including 644 minors and 470 women, had been killed in U.S.-led aerial attacks against civilian areas in Syria over the past 38 months.
The monitoring group added that the U.S.-led air raids had claimed the lives of 98 people, including four children and as many women, between October 23 and November 23 this year.
The SOHR went on to say that the civilian fatalities had been mostly recorded in the northern provinces of Hasakah, Raqqah, Aleppo and Idlib in addition to the eastern province of Dayr al-Zawr.
The U.S.-led coalition has been conducting airstrikes against what are said to be Daesh targets inside Syria since September 2014 without any authorization from the Damascus government or a UN mandate.
The military alliance has repeatedly been accused of targeting and killing civilians. It has also been largely incapable of achieving its declared goal of destroying Daesh.
On December 14, 2017, Syria’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Expatriates stated that the U.S.-led coalition is indeed targeting civilian facilities and providing Daesh terrorists with cover.

People and security forces gather at the site of a bomb attack in the Syrian city of Qamishli, June 19, 2016.