U.S. Targeting Syrian Infrastructure
DAMASCUS (Dispatches) – U.S. airstrikes seem to be expanding in scope in Syria, with four different provinces of the country hit in attacks, including areas where ISIL is virtually non-existent.
President Obama has been insisting it is an oversimplification to say this war is America versus ISIL. Indeed, that’s the case, but while the president is seeking to downplay the scope of the conflict, the signs are that he’s at war with actually a much broader swath of Syria.
Jabhat al-Nusra, one of the other militant factions that has found itself unofficially a target of the U.S. air war, through the attacks on the non-existent Khorasan faction, slammed the U.S. strikes as a full scale war against.
In ISIL-held areas, however, U.S.-led air strikes hit grain silos and other targets in northern and eastern Syria, killing civilians and wounding militants, a group monitoring the war said.
The aircraft may have mistaken the mills and grain storage areas in the northern Syrian town of Manbij for an ISIL base, said the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. There was no immediate comment from Washington.
The United States has targeted ISIL and other fighters in Syria since last week with the help of Arab allies, and in Iraq since last month. It purportedly aims to damage and destroy the bases, forces and supply lines of the Al-Qaeda offshoot which has captured large areas of both countries.
The strikes in Manbij appeared to have killed only civilians, not terrorists, said Rami Abdulrahman, who runs the Observatory which gathers information from sources in Syria.
"These were the workers at the silos. They provide food for the people,” he said. He could not give a number of casualties and it was not immediately possible to verify the information.
Manbij sits between Aleppo city in the west and the town of Kobani on the northern border with Turkey, which ISIL has been trying to capture from Kurdish forces, forcing tens of thousands of Syrian Kurds to flee over the frontier.
In eastern Syria, U.S.-led forces bombed a gas plant controlled by the ISIL outside Deir al-Zor city, the Observatory said.
The United States has said it wants strikes to target oil facilities held by ISIL to try to stem a source of revenues for the group.
The raid hit Kuniko gas plant, which feeds a power station in Homs that provides several provinces with electricity and powers oil fields generators, the Observatory said.
U.S.-led warplanes also hit areas of Hasaka city in the north east and the outskirts of Raqqa city in the north, which is ISIL’s stronghold.
Which is the inevitable consequence of the escalating U.S. air war against Syria, with no real intelligence about which ISIL militants are on the ground or where, and after attacks on oil refineries, the U.S. risks its strikes being seen locally as targeting the civilian infrastructure primarily.
The Pentagon is going back to its old narrative on civilian killings from previous wars, issuing a blanket denial claiming they hadn’t seen any evidence of civilian deaths anywhere in the war, and insisting they rely on reconnaissance flights to determine the "battle damage”.
Civilian deaths have been documented in previous U.S. strikes as well, including eight civilians slain in last week’s attacks on Khorasan. The Syrian Observatory says they’ve counted at least 19 civilians killed in U.S. strikes overall.
Collateral damage killings are inevitable in a U.S. air war that spans large portions of both Iraq and Syria and aims to "destroy” ISIL in several major cities, but racking up large body counts of innocent bystanders early in the war risks alienating the locals that it claims are so vital in the conflict.
President Obama has been insisting it is an oversimplification to say this war is America versus ISIL. Indeed, that’s the case, but while the president is seeking to downplay the scope of the conflict, the signs are that he’s at war with actually a much broader swath of Syria.
Jabhat al-Nusra, one of the other militant factions that has found itself unofficially a target of the U.S. air war, through the attacks on the non-existent Khorasan faction, slammed the U.S. strikes as a full scale war against.
In ISIL-held areas, however, U.S.-led air strikes hit grain silos and other targets in northern and eastern Syria, killing civilians and wounding militants, a group monitoring the war said.
The aircraft may have mistaken the mills and grain storage areas in the northern Syrian town of Manbij for an ISIL base, said the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. There was no immediate comment from Washington.
The United States has targeted ISIL and other fighters in Syria since last week with the help of Arab allies, and in Iraq since last month. It purportedly aims to damage and destroy the bases, forces and supply lines of the Al-Qaeda offshoot which has captured large areas of both countries.
The strikes in Manbij appeared to have killed only civilians, not terrorists, said Rami Abdulrahman, who runs the Observatory which gathers information from sources in Syria.
"These were the workers at the silos. They provide food for the people,” he said. He could not give a number of casualties and it was not immediately possible to verify the information.
Manbij sits between Aleppo city in the west and the town of Kobani on the northern border with Turkey, which ISIL has been trying to capture from Kurdish forces, forcing tens of thousands of Syrian Kurds to flee over the frontier.
In eastern Syria, U.S.-led forces bombed a gas plant controlled by the ISIL outside Deir al-Zor city, the Observatory said.
The United States has said it wants strikes to target oil facilities held by ISIL to try to stem a source of revenues for the group.
The raid hit Kuniko gas plant, which feeds a power station in Homs that provides several provinces with electricity and powers oil fields generators, the Observatory said.
U.S.-led warplanes also hit areas of Hasaka city in the north east and the outskirts of Raqqa city in the north, which is ISIL’s stronghold.
Which is the inevitable consequence of the escalating U.S. air war against Syria, with no real intelligence about which ISIL militants are on the ground or where, and after attacks on oil refineries, the U.S. risks its strikes being seen locally as targeting the civilian infrastructure primarily.
The Pentagon is going back to its old narrative on civilian killings from previous wars, issuing a blanket denial claiming they hadn’t seen any evidence of civilian deaths anywhere in the war, and insisting they rely on reconnaissance flights to determine the "battle damage”.
Civilian deaths have been documented in previous U.S. strikes as well, including eight civilians slain in last week’s attacks on Khorasan. The Syrian Observatory says they’ve counted at least 19 civilians killed in U.S. strikes overall.
Collateral damage killings are inevitable in a U.S. air war that spans large portions of both Iraq and Syria and aims to "destroy” ISIL in several major cities, but racking up large body counts of innocent bystanders early in the war risks alienating the locals that it claims are so vital in the conflict.