Great Satan US-Led Coalition’s Airstrikes Kill 18 Civilians in Syria

According to local activists, the US coalition carried out an airstrike over al-Andalas farms in Western Raqqa, killing at least 18 civilians near the strategic town of al-Tabaqa.

The US army had previously claimed that only 220 civilians were killed in the air attacks of the coalition under its command in Syria and Iraq since 2014.

The US command also noted that it could not investigate all reports of possible civilian casualties using “traditional investigative methods,” which involves interviewing witnesses and examining the site of the strike.

Instead, the coalition interviewed pilots and servicemen that took part in combat missions to draw results. The US command also reviewed strike surveillance videos and analyzed government and non-governmental organizations’ traditional and social media content.

Also, on Thursday, the US fighter jets’ airstrikes on a mosque in Aleppo province killed more than 40 civilians.

The US military announced that it carried out a deadly air strike on what it called an al-Qaeda meeting in Northern Syria, and added that it will investigate reports that more than 40 civilians were killed when a mosque was struck in a raid in the same area.

Jets struck the village of al-Jina, in Aleppo province, on Thursday at the time of evening prayer when the mosque was full of worshippers, with local activists saying up to 300 people were inside at the time of the attack.

Al-Jina’s population has been swollen by refugees, according to United Nations agencies.

In the meantime, Iraq Body Count’s website disclosed that 2,316 civilians were killed in air raids of the so-called anti-ISIL coalition only in Iraq since September1, 2014 till September1, 2016.

The US army declared estimates of 220 casualties fall far below the number voiced by some monitoring groups.

The Airwars monitoring group, reckoned that at least 2,463 civilians have been killed by coalition air strikes.

Amnesty International’s figures sharply contradict Washington’s assessment as well.

“We fear the US-led coalition is significantly underestimating the harm caused to civilians in its operations in Syria,” said Lynn Maalouf, Deputy Director for Research at Amnesty International’s Beirut regional office.

Last month, a Military Times investigation revealed that the US Central Command also misled the public when it failed to account for nearly 6,000 strikes dating back to 2014, when the US-led coalition launched its first airstrikes against ISIL terrorist targets.

In October, a senior politician and member of Syria’s Democratic Union blasted the wrong reports given out by different US and world bodies on the number of the civilian victims of the US airstrikes on Syria, disclosing that Washington’s air assaults on his country claimed the lives of over 5,000 civilians since 2014.

“The recent accusation leveled by Amnesty International against the US-led coalition for its reckless attitude towards civilian lives in its operations since the second half of 2014 is right, but this report mentions wrong figures for the relevant death toll,” Mohammad Khalaf Qandil said.

He reiterated that the number of the civilian casualties of the US-led airstrikes in the last two years was by no means any less than 5,000.

The senior politician also slammed the Amnesty International for its long delay in releasing the report, saying that the report was released while the US was committing crimes in Syria and killing large groups of civilians so freely and without any international backlash for several years now.

“These air raids have surely inflicted heavy losses on the Syrian army which is fighting the terrorists in Syria,” Qandil lamented.

Qandil’s remarks came after the Amnesty International reported that the US airstrikes in Syria claimed the lives of 300 to 1,000 civilians.