Strikes reportedly kill 35 Syria civilians

U.S. looks into allegations coalition air raids in eastern province were responsible

BEIRUT -- A fresh wave of airstrikes in eastern Syria killed at least 35 civilians, including women and children, state media and a monitoring group reported Friday.

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Capt. Jeff Davis, a Pentagon spokesman, said U.S.-led coalition forces conducted airstrikes in the area in Deir al-Zour province on Thursday and Friday.

"We are still assessing the results of those strikes," Davis said. "We take all allegations of civilian casualties seriously."

The United Nations human-rights chief, meanwhile, said Friday that civilians are increasingly paying the price of escalating attacks against the Islamic State extremist group in the country.

Zeid Raad al-Hussein's comments came hours after airstrikes on the Islamic State-held eastern Syrian town of Mayadeen, where airstrikes Thursday night killed dozens, many of them family members of Islamic State fighters.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the airstrikes were conducted by the U.S.-led coalition fighting the Islamic State. It added that the airstrikes began around sunset Thursday as people were heading to mosques for evening prayers and continued until the early hours of Friday.

"The same civilians who are suffering indiscriminate shelling and summary executions by ISIL, are also falling victim to the escalating airstrikes, particularly in the northeastern governorates of" Raqqa and Deir el-Zour, Zeid said in a statement from Geneva, using an acronym for the Islamic State. "Unfortunately, scant attention is being paid by the outside world to the appalling predicament of the civilians trapped in these areas."

The Observatory later said a total of 106 people have been killed in Mayadeen since Thursday evening, including Islamic State fighters and 42 children.

The monitoring group said among the 106 were 80 people who died when a four-story building housing families of Islamic State fighters from Syria and North Africa was destroyed in an airstrike. More than 20, including 10 Islamic State fighters, were killed in other airstrikes that hit the municipality building among other places.

The state-run Syrian Arab News Agency said 35 civilians, most of them women and children, were killed in the airstrikes, also blaming the coalition.

It is not unusual to have conflicting casualty figures in the immediate aftermath of airstrikes in Syria.

The United States has carried out more than 8,500 strikes in Syria since 2014, according to the Pentagon. An additional 8,700 U.S. strikes have been conducted in Iraq. Islamic State fighters are based in parts of the two countries, where they declared an Islamic "caliphate" in 2014.

Reports of deaths among civilians have been on the rise as the fighting against the Islamic State intensifies in northern and eastern Syria.

Omar Abu Laila, a Europe-based opposition activist who is originally from eastern Syria, said Mayadeen residents were urged through mosque loudspeakers to head to hospitals and clinics to donate blood. He also said that more airstrikes occurred in the early hours Friday. He added that about a dozen people were killed and that he is still waiting for casualty figures to emerge after the destruction of the building housing families of Islamic State fighters.

Zeid, in an appeal on Friday, urged all parties conducting strikes against the Islamic State in Syria to take greater care differentiating between military and civilian targets.

He cited a May 14 strike that reportedly killed 23 farmworkers in a rural area of Raqqa province and an airstrike the following day that is said to have killed at least 59 civilians and wounded dozens in the Islamic State-controlled eastern town of Boukamal that is also in in Deir el-Zour province.

Zeid, who is a member of the Jordanian royal family, said the rising toll of civilian casualties suggests "insufficient precautions" are being taken in the attacks.

Zeid said he was concerned about retaliatory measures taken by the Islamic State against civilians suspected of facilitating the airstrikes and reports that civilians were being prevented from leaving Islamic State-controlled areas. The day after the incident at Boukamal, Islamic State fighters reportedly slit the throats of eight men at the site of the attack, accusing them of providing coordinates for the air strikes.

Information for this article was contributed by Bassem Mroue, Dominique Soguel, Zeina Karam and Robert Burns of The Associated Press and by Erin Cunningham of The Washington Post.

A Section on 05/27/2017

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