US-led coalition denies report on Syria strike deaths

Syrian state television said on Monday an airstrike by a US-led coalition had killed 18 Iraqi refugees at a school in eastern Syria, but the coalition denied it.

The state television report said the strike took place in a village in Hasaka province between the Euphrates river and the Iraqi border, an area where a US-led coalition is supporting local fighters against ISIS.

A spokesman for the coalition, Col. Sean Ryan, said the report was false, adding “we are not tracking any coalition strikes today in Hasaka injuring or killing civilians”. A war monitor, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, said the US-backed fighters had captured the village in fighting, but did not know if civilians had been killed by a strike there.

Last week the rights group Amnesty International issued a report saying there was evidence the US-led coalition broke international humanitarian law with some of its strikes in Raqqa last year by endangering the lives of civilians.

Smoke rises from building in Raqa's eastern al-Sanaa neighbourhood, on the edge of the old city, on August 13, 2017, as Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), a US backed Kurdish-Arab alliance, battle to retake the city from the Islamic State (IS) group. (AFP)

Intense fighting

The coalition rejected that, saying it applies “rigorous standards to our targeting process and takes extraordinary efforts to protect non-combatants”. Fighting has intensified east of the Euphrates in recent weeks since the Syrian Democratic Forces, an alliance of Kurdish and Arab militias, resumed its campaign against ISIS.

Backed by the coalition, the SDF took swathes of northern and eastern Syria from ISIS last year, including the militants’ Syrian capital of Raqqa. However, with some desert areas east of the Euphrates still in ISIS’s hands, it paused its campaign in February when Turkey attacked the Afrin area in northwest Syria, held by the SDF's strongest component, the Kurdish YPG.

Fighting has also flared west of the Euphrates in recent weeks in desert areas the Syrian government reclaimed from ISIS last year, after the group launched a series of attacks. The Observatory said late last week the militants had attacked Albu Kamal, the last significant town the group had held in Syria last year before pro-government forces seized it.

On Sunday, pro-government media issued a video online showing a Syrian army offensive in a desert area southeast of Damascus against ISISI militants there.