US-led airstrike kills nearly two dozen civilians in Syria

In this file photo released by the US Air Force, fighter jets fly over northern Iraq as part of coalition airstrikes in Syria.

Nearly two dozen civilians have lost their lives when the US-led coalition purportedly fighting the Daesh Takfiri terrorist group carried out an aerial attack against an area in Syria’s eastern province of Dayr al-Zawr near the border with Iraq, a monitoring group says.

The so-called Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) said the airstrike targeted the city of Abu Kamal on the Euphrates River at around 3 a.m. local time (0100 GMT) on Monday.

The group noted that some of those killed in the strike were civilians displaced from both Syria's militant-held northern province of Raqqah and neighboring Iraq.

The development came less than two days after a US-led aerial attack in Raqqah Province killed 12 women.

The SOHR said the Sunday afternoon strike had hit vehicles carrying farm workers home from fields in the east of the province.

At least 11 people lost their lives and several others sustained injuries late on May 9, when the US-led coalition bombarded al-Salihiya village in northern Syria.

There were reportedly four children and six women among the victims.

The US-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 city of Raqqah, which lies on the northern bank of the Euphrates River, was overrun by Daesh terrorists in March 2013, and was proclaimed the center for most of the Takfiris’ administrative and control tasks the next year.

The US-led coalition has repeatedly been accused of targeting and killing civilians. It has also been largely incapable of fulfilling its declared aim of destroying Daesh.

Syria has been fighting different foreign-sponsored militant and terrorist groups since March 2011. UN Special Envoy for Syria Staffan de Mistura estimated last August that more than 400,000 people had been killed in the crisis until then.