DAMASCUS (Dispatches) – At least two civilians have lost their lives and several others sustained injuries when the U.S.-led coalition purportedly fighting the Daesh terrorist group carried out a string of airstrikes against Syria’s eastern province of Dayr al-Zawr.
Local sources, requesting anonymity, told Syria’s official news agency SANA that the airborne assaults targeted residential buildings in the town of al-Susah, killing a couple and injuring a number of their family members, mostly women and children.
Amnesty International says the U.S.-led coalition is "deeply in denial" about the number of civilians killed during an offensive it launched last year to dislodge Daesh terrorists from Syria’s northern city of Raqqah.
The Britain-based rights organization, in a statement released on Tuesday, condemned the military contingent’s position on the findings of a June 5 report about the four-month-long assault to flush the extremists out of the city.
"The coalition's knee-jerk reactions are long on rhetoric and short on detail,” Donatella Rovera, a senior adviser at Amnesty International, said.
Meanwhile, heavy bombardment killed at least six people in a village in southwestern Syria on Tuesday, the so-called Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported, as the Syrian government pressed a Russian-backed offensive in the area.
UOSSM, a medical charity that operates in the area, said a bomb had killed more than 10 people in the village, Ain al-Tineh, most of them women and children.
Ahmad al-Dbis, UOSSM safety and security manager, said another 35 people had been wounded in the attack which he said had hit a school. The casualties had fled to the village from nearby parts of the southwest.
Meanwhile, the political arm of the so-called Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), a U.S.-backed coalition of mainly Kurdish militants holding a grip on northeastern Syria, says it is devising a negotiating team for potential talks with the central government in Damascus.
The so-called Syrian Democratic Council (SDC), which is linked to the SDF umbrella militant group, held a gathering in the northern town of Tabqa for a two-day meeting, with local Kurdish officials and Syrian domestic opposition figures in attendance.
Leading SDC member Hekmat Habib told the AFP that one of the meeting’s aims was "to create a platform to negotiate” with the Syrian government.
"This platform will represent all areas in the autonomous administration and all areas held by the SDF,” he said, without providing further details.
The militants are allied with US and French troops deployed to Syria and control much of the country’s north and east.
In June, the SDC said it was ready for "unconditional” peace talks with the government.
The Kurdish militants in northern Syria have been a source of tensions between the US and Turkey. Ankara wants the U.S. to stop supporting and arming the Kurds, but Washington rejects that call.
 
A picture taken on September 5, 2017 shows smoke billowing out following a U.S.-led airstrike in the western al-Daraiya neighborhood of the embattled northern Syrian city of Raqqah.