US-led coalition denies state news agency report on Syria strike deaths

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The US-led coalition killed 18 civilians, mostly Iraqi refugees, in airstrikes Monday on the al-Hasakah province in northeastern Syria, according to state news agency SANA. However, the coalition denied it.

The airstrikes targeted the town of Khoeberah in the southern countryside of al-Hasakah, said SANA, adding that women and children were among the killed Iraqi refugees.

A spokesman for the coalition, Col. Sean Ryan, said the report was false, adding “we are not tracking any coalition strikes Monday in al-Hasakah 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.

The attack came after 10 civilians, mostly women and children, were killed last Tuesday in US-led airstrikes on the town of Jaza'a in the southern countryside of al-Shaddadah city in al-Hasakah.

SANA said the US-led coalition is ramping up airstrikes on the southern countryside of al-Hasakah to enable the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) to take control.

The United States and the SDF have been on an offensive against positions of the ISIL group in the southern countryside of al-Hasakah to consolidate the US-backed troops' control in areas east of the Euphrates River.

The Syrian government has slammed the killing of civilians by the US-led coalition, calling it an "illegitimate" coalition that should be disbanded.

(Cover photo: Smoke billows following an airstrike on the western frontline of Raqa July 17, 2017, during an offensive by the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces, to retake the city from ISIL group fighters. /VCG Photo)

Source(s): Reuters ,Xinhua News Agency