Beirut: Four children were among at least six civilians killed in a US-led air strike on the IS group’s embattled enclave in eastern Syria, a monitor said on Saturday. The Friday strike on the Euphrates Valley village of Baghouz killed 10 IS fighters as well as the six civilians, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.
There was no immediate comment from the US-led coalition. Baghouz is part of an enclave of less than 15 square kilometres that is all that is left of IS territory in Syria following a gruelling Kurdish-led offensive launched with coalition support last May. The Britain-based Observatory said the coalition had stepped up its air strikes against IS since the fighters killed 19 people, four of them Americans, in a bombing on a restaurant in the flashpoint northern town of Manbij on Wednesday.
“The strikes are continuing, and have intensified since the Manbij attack,” Observatory chief Rami Abdel Rahman said.
The US losses were the biggest since Washington deployed troops in Syria in 2014 in support of the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces.
Previously it had reported just two combat losses in separate incidents.
The Manbij bombing rekindled controversy triggered by President Donald Trump last month with his surprise announcement of a full withdrawal from Syria.
The US president justified the order with the assertion that the fighters had now been largely defeated” in Syria, a claim that the attack threw into renewed question.
Meanwhile, US President Donald Trump made a surprise announcement on Saturday he would be travelling to meet the families of four US personnel killed in northern Syria.
He tweeted: “Will be leaving for Dover to be with the families of 4 very special people who lost their lives in service to our Country!”
Dover refers to Dover Air Force Base in Delaware.
Nineteen people including the four Americans were killed in a suicide bombing on a small restaurant in the flashpoint northern Syrian town of Manbij on Wednesday.
The attack, claimed by the IS group, was the deadliest to hit US troops since they deployed to Syria in 2014.
It came after Trump’s shock announcement last month that he was ordering a full troop withdrawal from the country because the fighters had been “largely defeated.”
Two US service members, one Department of Defence civilian and one contractor were among those killed in the Manbij attack. — AFP
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