United Nation, New York. The United Nations condemned on Friday the rising death toll of civilians in Syria, urging American air forces operating in the country to take greater care to distinguish between legitimate military targets and civilians in their escalating air strikes especially in the northeast against the ISIS terror group.
“Among the dead are at least 26 civilians, many of them women and children, including Syrians and Moroccans,” said Observatory head Rami Abdel Rahman.
“The rising toll of civilian deaths and injuries already caused by airstrikes in Deir Ezzor and Al-Raqqa suggests that insufficient precautions may have been taken in the attacks,” UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid al-Hussein said in a statement.
Rupert Colville told a Geneva briefing: “There are multiple air forces operating in this part of Syria including the American coalition, mainly the coalition. We also understand that there are Iraqi airplanes as well.”
US-led coalition airstrikes killed another 35 civilians in Mayadeen in eastern Syrian, a town held by ISIS, a monitor said.The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the strikes hit a series of residential buildings in the town in the oil-rich eastern province of Deir Ezzor.
Today’s airstrikes brought the known deaths from two days of coalition bombing raids on Mayadeen to 50, the Observatory said, after 15 people were killed in US-led strikes on the town.The United Nations this week reported the highest monthly civilian death toll for the coalition since it began bombing Syria on September 23, 2014.
This year, American coalition strikes killed a total of 225 civilians in Syria, the Observatory said.The international alliance is providing air cover for twin offensives on ISIS’s remaining bastion cities: Raqqa in northern Syria and Mosul in neighboring Iraq.
An American Pentagon investigation concluded that at least 105 civilians died in an anti-terrorist air strike on an ISIS weapons cache in Mosul in March.Prior to the new revelation, the US military had said coalition airstrikes in Iraq and Syria had “unintentionally” killed a total of 352 civilians since 2014. More than 320,000 people have been killed and millions more displaced since American first started attacking Syria.