US-led Air Strikes in Syria Kills 865
Air strikes carried out by U.S.-led forces in Syria have killed a total of 865 people since the beginning of the campaign against the Islamic State militants, a group monitoring violence in the region said Wednesday.
The U.S.-led coalition aimed at "erasing" the jihadists from the region. The forces started carrying out air strikes around late September, Reuters reports.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights that is based in Britain stated that even though most of those killed, 746 people, were Islamic State militants, at least 50 were civilians including children and another 68 belonged to al-Qaida's Syrian affiliate - the Nusra Front. As many as eight children and five women have been killed in the airstrikes, the activist group further said, The Washington Post reports.
The observatory noted that the strikes hit provinces of Aleppo, Deir al-Zor, Hasaka, Raqqa and Idlib in Syria.
The United States has said that it already has a system in place to investigate each allegation regarding civilian casualties due to airstrikes conducted by the U.S.-led forces.
The U.S.-led coalition had first begun carrying out the air strikes in Iraq, where the group had seized a large chunk of land and was heading toward the capital city of Baghdad. Later, on orders from President Obama, the campaign was expanded to the part of Syria that was under the Islamic State militants who had considered the region to be a safe haven. Many countries are working with the United States in its attempt to eventually destroy the Islamic State.
