– 2016-02-19 01:15:27
US Airstrikes Kill 38 Syrian Civilians Over 48 Hours
Jason Ditz / AntiWar.com
(February 18, 2016) — As reported Tuesday, an early morning US airstrike against the city of Shadadi killed 15 civilians outside a bakery. This incident was the start of a flurry of US airstrikes in Syria’s northeast which, over the past 48 hours, have left at least 38 civilians dead, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
Three villages near Shadadi were targeted early Thursday morning, killing another 15 civilians, including three children, while eight more civilians were killed in airstrikes elsewhere around the region. A separate strike in the town of al-Houl did manage to kill 35 ISIS fighters, however.
The US has been escalating its involvement in Syria in recent days with these airstrikes, but apart from al-Houl seems to be having limited success, and also causing a lot of civilian casualties. While the Pentagon generally disputes civilian deaths, the incidents are fueling concern from human rights groups.
The inaccuracy of the Hasakeh strikes, coming in the only Syrian province which has US ground troops, also adds to doubts about the intelligence upon which the US coalition is basing its airstrikes around Syria. Clearly, strikes like the bakery give the appearance of using the “signature strikes” tactic, just bombing anything on the ground that the pilot thinks might be important.
US Air Strike Hits Syrian Bakery, Kills 15 Civilians
Jason Ditz / AntiWar.com
(February 16, 2016) — An early dawn US air raid against the Syrian city of Shadadi ended with airstrikes hitting the city’s bakery, and killing 15 civilians who were lining up outside to buy bread just before the bakery opened, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
Shadadi is considered a strategically important city for ISIS, as it is along the Iraq-Syria border and is used as a logistics hub for ISIS forces operating between the two fronts. There were reportedly strikes around the outskirts of Shadadi, but the only casualties reported were the civilians at the bakery.
It was unclear why the bakery was attacked, and the US isn’t commenting yet, though historically when the US attacks ISIS-held towns they focus on places with a lot of people, assuming they’re “command” structures. In this case, it was a purely civilian target.
This is the latest in a growing number of civilian deaths in attacks on ISIS-held towns, as the US-led coalition as well as the Russian military both pick up their air war against northern Syria. Though the US regularly faults Russia over the civilians killed in their strikes, they rarely touch on the substantial civilian toll of their own strikes.
Air Strikes Kill 15 People in Syria’s Northeastern City: Monitor
Mariam Karouny / Reuters
BEIRUT (February 16, 2016) — US-led air strikes killed at least 15 people on Tuesday when they hit a bakery in the city of Shadadi in northeastern Syria near the border with Iraq, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.
Rami Abdulrahman, who runs the British-based monitoring group, said all of those killed were civilians who gathered outside the bakery at dawn to buy bread.
“They carried out several air strikes inside Shadadi and around it. But the 15 were killed because of a strike on the bakery inside the city,” he said.
Al-Shadadi is a logistics hub for the Islamic State group, located on a network of highways and whose capture would isolate Raqqa, the defacto capital of the hardline group.
Reuters could not independently confirm the report.
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