Nearly dozen civilians killed in new US-led strikes on Syria’s Hasakah

This picture taken on September 5, 2017, shows smoke billowing out following a US-led coalition airstrike in the western al-Daraiya neighborhood of the embattled northern Syrian city of Raqqah. (Photo by AFP)

Nearly a dozen civilians have lost their lives when the US-led coalition purportedly fighting the Daesh Takfiri terrorist group carried out a series of airstrikes on Syria’s northeastern province of Hasakah.

Local sources said eleven people were killed in the US-led aerial attacks against a Daesh-controlled prison in Abu Hamezah village on Thursday, Arabic-language Baladi news network reported. 

The so-called Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) reported on November 23, 2017 that 2,759 civilians, including 644 minors and 470 women, had been killed in US-led aerial attacks against civilian areas in Syria over the past 38 months.

The monitoring group added that the US-led air raids had claimed the lives of 98 people, including four children and as many women, between October 23 and November 23, 2017.

The SOHR went on to say that the civilian fatalities had been mostly recorded in the provinces of Hasakah, Raqqah, Aleppo and Idlib in addition to the eastern province of Dayr al-Zawr.

The US-led coalition has been conducting airstrikes against what are said to be Daesh targets inside Syria since September 2014 without any authorization from the Damascus government or a UN mandate. 

The military alliance has repeatedly been accused of targeting and killing civilians. It has also been largely incapable of achieving its declared goal of destroying Daesh.

On December 14, 2017, Syria’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Expatriates stated that the US-led coalition was indeed targeting civilian facilities and providing Daesh terrorists with cover.

This file picture shows a view of the building of Syria’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Expatriates in the capital Damascus. (Photo by Sputnik news agency)

It noted that Daesh terrorists had been purged from most regions in Syria only through counter-terrorism operations conducted by government troops and allied fighters from popular defense groups.

The Syrian Foreign Ministry also criticized the so-called advocates of human rights and rule of law for turning a blind eye to the atrocities perpetrated by the US-led coalition in Raqqah and Dayr al-Zawr provinces.