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Activists and local residents in Syria say US-led airstrikes have killed at least 40 people, mostly women and children, the report said. World news. The United States is leading the latest wave of airstrikes in the last-remaining ISM-held resistance pack in the Buqan region near Hajin on the eastern shores of the Euphrates.
Colonel Sean Ryan, spokesman for the US-led coalition, confirmed the existence of strikes, but denied the existence of civilian casualties. Ryan said: "The coalition is taking great steps to identify and hit the appropriate targets of the Islamic State in order to avoid non-combat losses.
"We have witnessed the use of places of worship and hospitals as command centers against the laws of war and innocent civilians as human shields," said coalition spokesman Colonel Sean Ryan. in an email to the Associated press.
AMAQ, the ISIS news agency, told a medical source that 40 people had been killed, a statement corroborated by Syrian media SANA. The remote region is difficult to access and so far, Western news agencies have not been able to independently verify this information.
However, Rami Abdurrahman, head of the Syrian Observatory of Human Rights based in Britain, said the air strikes had hit homes in the village of Abu al-Hassan, making at least 43 dead. Abdurrahman said that 17 women and 12 children were among the dead, but that it is not certain that the killed men are militants of the Islamic State.
The US-led coalition has just issued a press release in which it denies the recent accusations of numerous civilian casualties as a result of air strikes on alleged targets of the Islamic State. pic.twitter.com/gnqV3G96XI
– Charles Davis (@charliearchy) November 17, 2018
The Syrian government protested to the United Nations against US-led air strikes last week, after claiming the death of 26 civilians in Hajin.
Omar Abu Leila, an activist who monitors the war, said Islamic State militants were preventing civilians from leaving the area, which is at least partly responsible for the high number of civilians killed. At least 191 civilians have died in the battle since 10 September.
The region is ISIS's last base east of the Euphrates, and the US coalition and the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) have made concerted efforts to drive it out of the region. Last year, the coalition ousted the Islamic State from its Syrian headquarters in Raqqa.
"We never thought or said that this fight would be easy. These are some of the most determined fighters and they have had plenty of time to prepare their defensive positions. So it is not an easy fight, and our partners in the Syrian democratic force supported by the coalition are attacking the enemy every day. , "Said Commander-in-Chief Christopher Ghika.
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