At least 23 civilians, including eight children, have been killed in air raids on an ISIL-held village in northern Syria, according to a monitor.

The fighter jets that carried out the strikes were believed to belong to the US-led coalition fighting the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL/ISIS) armed group, the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said on Thursday.



"The raids hit the village of al-Matab after midnight and were likely carried out by the coalition," according to Rami Abdel Rahman, head of the Observatory.



At least six women were also among the dead in al-Matab, which lies near a key road linking Raqqa - ISIL's de facto capital - to Deir Az Zor city, the capital of the adjacent oil-rich province.

On Monday, fighters from the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) cut off that route in an effort to encircle the the ISIL fighters in Raqqa.



The US-led coalition has been backing the SDF's drive for Raqqa with air power and hundreds of special operations forces as advisers.



The SDF, an alliance of Kurdish and Arab fighters, launched its offensive for Raqqa in early November, and has since seized swaths of territory in northern Syria.



But its advance has angered Turkey, which sees the umbrella group's dominant YPG militia (People's Protection Units) - as an extension of Kurdish PKK fighters. The PKK has waged a three-decade conflict in southeastern Turkey.



The profusion of forces operating in Syria - particularly in its fractured north - has led to a deeply complex battlefield and tensions between different parties.

READ MORE: Idlib's rebel split - A crossroads for Syrian opposition

The US-led coalition fighting ISIL in Syria and Iraq said earlier this month that its raids had unintentionally killed at least 220 civilians since 2014 in both countries.

Critics say the real number is much higher.

Elsewhere in Syria, fighter jets pounded the rebel-held city of Kfranbel in Idlib province, killing at least four people, according to activists at the scene.

Media activist Hadi al-Abdullah said four air strikes on civilian areas in Kfranbel left heavy damage and killed at least two children.

He said dozens of others were wounded in the early-morning raids.</s>The civilian death toll in air strikes thought to have been conducted by a US-led coalition on a jihadist-held Syrian village on Thursday has risen to 23, a monitor said.

The Islamic State group is facing simultaneous offensives in northern Syria by government forces, Turkish-backed rebels, and a US-supported alliance of Kurdish and Arab fighters.

They are also being pummelled by Iraqi forces over the border in their most populous bastion Mosul.

“The raids hit the village of Al-Matab after midnight and were likely carried out by the coalition,” said Rami Abdel Rahman of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

At least eight children and six women were among the dead in Al-Matab, which is held by the Islamic State group.

The village lies near a key road linking IS’s de facto Syria capital Raqa with the partly-IS held city of Deir Ezzor further down the Euphrates Valley.

On Monday, fighters of the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces cut off the road in a bid to encircle the jihadists in Raqa.

The US-led coalition has been backing the SDF’s drive on the IS stronghold with air power and hundreds of military advisers.

Abdel Rahman said SDF fighters were advancing on Al-Matab, which lies about 55 kilometres (35 miles) southeast of Raqa.

The SDF launched its drive on the city in early November and has since seized swathes of territory.

But it is despised by Ankara, which condemns the group’s dominant component — the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) — as “terrorists” because of its links to an outlawed Kurdish rebel group in Turkey.

The profusion of forces operating in Syria — particularly in its fractured north — has led to a deeply complex battlefield and tensions between the rival parties.

The US-led coalition fighting IS said earlier this month that its raids in Iraq and Syria had unintentionally killed at least 220 civilians since 2014.

Critics say the real number is much higher.

Further east, in Deir Ezzor province, suspected Russian strikes hit the IS-held town of Al-Mayadeen, killing seven civilians and wounding 70, the Observatory said.

“The dead included three children and their parents,” said Abdel Rahman.

Al-Mayadeen lies on the Euphrates River between Deir Ezzor and the Iraqi border.

The Observatory, which relies on a network of sources inside Syria for its information, says it determines whose planes carry out raids according to type, location, flight patterns and munitions used.

More than 310,000 people have been killed since conflict broke out in Syria in March 2011 with protests against the rule of President Bashar al-Assad.</s>Air strikes killed 23 civilians, including eight children, on Thursday in countryside around the northern Syrian city of Raqqa, the Islamic State's base in Syria, a war monitoring group said.

The warplanes were believed to belong to the US-led coalition against the Islamic State militants, the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

The jets struck the village of al-Matab southeast of Raqqa, near the Euphrates River, the Observatory said, adding that several air raids had also pounded areas east of the city.

An alliance of Syrian militias has been waging an offensive on Raqqa with air strikes and special ground forces from the US-led coalition.

The US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces cut the last main road out of Raqqa this week, severing the highway between the city and the militant group's stronghold of Deir al-Zor.

The US military has said it makes "extraordinary efforts" to avoid civilian deaths in its bombing campaign against Islamic State in Syria and Iraq.

The military's estimates of civilians killed by coalition air strikes are generally far lower than those of monitoring groups.</s>Air strikes killed 14 civilians, including six children, on Thursday near Islamic State-held Raqqa city in northern Syria, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said. 

 

 The Britain-based war monitor said the warplanes were believed to belong to the U.S.-led coalition, which is supporting an alliance of Syrian militias in its campaign against Islamic State's base of operations in Syria.</s>Damascus, March 9 At least 23 civilians were killed in airstrikes by the US-led international coalition near the Syrian city of al-Raqqa, a British war monitor reported on Thursday. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said that six children and four women were among those killed, reported Efe news.

Start the conversation, or Read more at India.com.</s>BEIRUT: Air strikes killed 14 civilians, including six children, on Thursday in countryside around Raqqa city in northern Syria, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

The warplanes were believed to belong to the U.S.-led coalition against Islamic State, the Britain-based war monitoring group said.

The jets pounded a village southeast of Raqqa city, near the Euphrates River and along the road to Deir al-Zor province, the Observatory said. Most of those killed were from the same family, it said.

With air strikes and special ground forces from the U.S.-led coalition, an alliance of Syrian militias has been waging an offensive on Raqqa, Islamic State's base in Syria.

The U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces cut the last main road out of Raqqa this week, severing the highway between the city and the militant group's stronghold of Deir al-Zor.

The U.S. military has said it takes "extraordinary efforts" to avoid civilian deaths in its bombing campaign against Islamic State in Syria and Iraq.

The military's estimates of civilians killed by coalition air strikes are generally far lower than those of monitoring groups.</s>A flurry of airstrikes by planes belonging to the US-led anti-ISIS coalition attacked the village of al-Matab today, just southeast of the ISIS capital city of Raqqa. The strikes killed 23 civilians, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, with at least eight of them children.

Coalition spokesman Col. John Dorrian confirmed that US warplanes were carrying out airstrikes in the area in question, but said there was no way to know whether their airstrikes were the ones causing the casualties. He promised an investigation.

Of course, US investigations into airstrikes in Iraq and Syria almost never result in credible death tolls, with most of the investigations scrapped before any conclusion is reached, and the “official” US death toll less than 10% of the civilian toll from strikes reported by NGOs.

US officials are claiming a number of ISIS leadership figures have been trying to flee southeast from Raqqa into Deir Ezzor Province, and that the US and their allies are trying to cut off the road between the two. Whether bombing civilians in a village in the area is part of that plan is unclear.
• Centcom Commander Expects More US Troops Will Be Sent to Afghanistan - March 9th, 2017
• US Army Seeking New Bases for Deployments in Europe - March 9th, 2017</s>The army has been attempting a slow build-up of troops around the province in order to retake Aleppo city, once Syria's biggest commercial hub. So far Assad's push has been dogged by rebel counter-attacks, although a string of government victories elsewhere in Syria has shifted the battlefield tide in his favour after more than two years of bloodshed.

Elsewhere in northern Syria, Assad's forces launched a third day of heavy air strikes on the town of Saraqeb in Idlib province. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said that by late afternoon, jets had already flown 12 raids over the town. Initial counts said five had been killed on Saturday, three of them children.

Neighbouring Idlib and Aleppo provinces are regions in northern Syria that have become a stronghold for rebels fighting to end four decades of rule by the Assad family.

It was unclear why Saraqeb has been so heavily targeted, but some local activists suggested this was retaliation for a rebel capture of a nearby army checkpoint.

Others posited that the army was trying to hammer areas near a critical road leading to Aleppo in order to distract the rebels and be able to bring in supplies to its forces.

Rebels have been blockading government-held areas in Aleppo city, Syria's largest urban centre. Aleppo has been mired in a bloody stalemate since rebels launched an offensive in the province last year.

Street protests-turned-insurgency in Syria have killed more than 100,000 people since March 2011, according to the Observatory, and have destroyed ancient buildings and artefacts across the major Arab state.

Assad's forces have been on the offensive since last month when the army, backed by militants from the powerful Lebanese guerrilla group Hezbollah, recaptured a border town near Lebanon straddling supply lines between Damascus and Syria's seacoast.

Hezbollah-backed Syrian forces have been bearing down hard on rebel pockets around Damascus and other parts of the central province of Homs, part of a strategy to cement control of a belt of territory between the capital and his stronghold on the Mediterranean coast, before focusing on other regions.

While his forces seem to be nearing that goal around Homs and on the outskirts of the capital, they have made little progress around the northern and southern borders where rebels have a foothold.

Around Damascus, the army has made gains in the countryside but has faced an uptick of rebel bomb attacks inside the capital in recent weeks. The rebels often use car bombs and other explosives to hit at areas where they have a weaker presence.

An improvised explosive device hit a central neighbourhood of Damascus on Saturday, killing one person and wounding several others, according to the Britain-based Observatory, which has a network of activists across SYria.

Activists also said that several rockets hit the central Abbassid Square of the city, damaging several buildings.

In recent weeks the rebels have been making slow but persistent progress in Deraa province in the south thanks to a fresh but intermittent influx of weapons coming in from neighbouring Jordan.

In Aleppo, near the Turkish border, hardline Islamist rebels - some of them linked to al Qaeda - appear to be leading the fight to seize Khan al-Assal, according to activists in the area who asked not to be named.

Western powers like the United States are alarmed about the rising power of radical Islamist groups, particularly since Washington has pledged to offer military support to Assad's opponents. No military aid has been given yet due to political deadlock over the Islamist issue in the U.S. Congress.

"Perhaps the Islamists are trying to stay out of the spotlight. They've been regrouping and naming themselves with numbers, things like 'the 9th Division' and so on, but these are the same Islamist radical groups like the Islamic State of Iraq and Sham or the Islamic Front to Liberate Syria," one opposition activist said, declining to be named.

Assad's forces have responded to the rebel advance on Khan al-Assal with a string of air raids in the area that set alight swathes of nearby farmland, according to the Observatory.

It counted at least 12 soldiers and four rebels killed in the latest fighting.</s>BEIRUT, March 9 (Reuters) - Air strikes pounded a town in the eastern Syrian province of Deir al-Zor on Thursday, killing seven civilians and injuring more than 70 others, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

The Britain-based war monitoring group said two warplanes, believed to be Russian, dropped nearly two dozen bombs on al-Mayadin in the Islamic State stronghold of Deir al-Zor.

The strikes hit a school sheltering displaced people, a bakery and residential areas in the town, which lies along the Euphrates river, the Observatory said.

The Syrian government and its Russian ally have repeatedly said they only target militants.

Islamic State controls most of Deir al-Zor province, which borders Iraq, including more than half the city of the same name. The ultra-hardline jihadist group has besieged the remaining government-held areas of Deir al-Zor city for nearly two years.

Jets also hit the southern outskirts of the city on Thursday, the Observatory said.

Islamic State fighters launched their biggest attack in months on the government-held part of the city earlier in January, in a battle that killed dozens.

The Syrian and Russian air forces hit back against Islamic State positions, and have regularly struck the city and surrounding rural areas since then, the Observatory said. (Reporting by Ellen Francis; Editing by Toby Davis)</s>BEIRUT — At least 20 civilians, including some children, were killed in suspected U.S.-coalition airstrikes on a village east of the Islamic State group’s de-facto capital in Syria, activists reported Thursday, as the militants come under mounting pressure by rival U.S.-backed and Russian-backed forces in northern Syria.

The report comes a day after Defense Department officials announced that the U.S. deployed 200 Marines into the region south of the Syrian-Turkish border, with heavy artillery guns to support partners the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces in their campaign for Raqqa, the IS capital.

The deployment reflects Washington’s deeper involvement in Syria under the administration of President Donald Trump and thrusts the U.S. further into a difficult diplomatic entanglement.

The SDF, seen as the most dependable Syrian fighting force against IS, withdrew from areas near its bastion Manbij to make room for the Syrian military to deploy last week. Manbij lies 70 miles (113 kilometers) northwest of Raqqa.

“There is a clear coordination between the Syrian army and Kurdish forces,” Syrian lawmaker Omar Osse told the AP Thursday.

But the Syrian government is a pariah to Western states, and Damascus has never approved the presence of their militaries on Syrian soil.

“Any presence of U.S. forces or other forces on the Syrian land, without coordination with the Syrian state, is considered a flagrant violation of the Syrian sovereignty,” said Osse.

The Marine deployment also risks antagonizing U.S.-NATO ally Turkey. The SDF is led by the Kurdish PYD party, which Turkey says is a terrorist organization.

Also on Thursday, engineers restored two water pumping stations that feed water to the country’s largest city, Aleppo, in territory captured by the Syrian government from IS militants this week, state media reported.

Water should reach the city within 24 hours of starting the pumps, according to Ahmad Shami, who used to work for the city’s public water utility.

The engineer decided to work for the opposition’s administration after rebels divided Aleppo in 2012, putting him at odds with the government. He was forced out of the city in December with the rest of the opposition on the heels of a devastating military campaign waged by the government. He spoke to the AP by text message.

Aleppo, once Syria’s industrial capital, suffered for years from severe water shortages as the government and opposition fighters contested the city and the Islamic State group controlled its upstream source — the pumping stations at the town of Khafseh on the Euphrates River.

Residents in Aleppo have depended on wells and water deliveries arranged by the government, charities and the U.N. children’s agency, UNICEF.

UNICEF has been trucking water to Aleppo at a cost of around $20,000 to $25,000 per day since the militants turned off the Khafseh station on Jan. 14, the agency’s Damascus office told the AP. It has rehabilitated or constructed 220 wells in the city since late 2015.

Imad al-Khal, 64, a resident of al-Aziziyeh neighborhood in Aleppo, told The Associated Press that municipal water hasn’t reached his home in nine weeks. The water outage has affected 1.5 million to 2 million people, according to UNICEF.

Pro-government forces have been marching east of Aleppo in the direction of Raqqa since December. They recaptured Khafseh earlier this week.

On Thursday, government forces and their allies entered Jarrah airbase, 10 miles (16 kilometers) south of Khafseh, for the first time since 2014, the Observatory and the activist group Raqqa is Being Slaughtered Silently said.

The IS group commandeered several MiG warplanes when they captured the Jarrah air base in 2014. Days later, Syrian warplanes bombed the aircraft on the runway.

In the area east of Raqqa, RBSS reported at least 20 civilians were killed in airstrikes Wednesday night on Matab Village.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, however, said the strikes occurred before dawn Tuesday and killed 23 people, including eight children.

It was not possible to reconcile the two accounts — the Islamic State group maintains a tight grip on communications from its territory. The Observatory and RBSS get their information from closely guarded local contacts.

Russian and Syrian aircraft are not known to operate in the area, according to the Observatory. The group said U.S.-led coalition aircraft were believed to behind the attack.

The coalition did not confirm the strikes and there was no immediate indication which nation’s aircraft were involved.
According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, multiple suspected U.S.-led coalition air raids kill at least 23 civilians in the village of al-Matab in northern Syria.