At least 26 Syrian civilians have been killed in an airstrike suspected to have been launched by the US-led coalition against the so-called Islamic State, piling pressure on the alliance after allegations another bombing raid left regime soldiers dead.
The coalition has been bombarding the Islamic State group for more than a year inSyria and neighbouring Iraq, where the jihadists have declared a self-styled caliphate.
But according to a monitoring group, strikes on Monday on the village of Al-Khan in north-eastern Syria only left civilians dead.
Rami Abdel Rahman of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said Isis is in control of Al-Khan but is only on its outskirts, “which is why all of the deaths were civilians”.
The death toll included at least seven children and four women, he said, adding that it was likely to rise as more than a dozen civilians were still missing under rubble.
A spokesman for US Central Command said the military was investigating the allegations. “We take all such allegations seriously and conduct credibility assessments of all information we receive regarding civilian casualties. If the information is deemed credible we will investigate and publicly release the results of the investigation,” the spokesman said.
Last month, the US said four civilians were “likely” to have been killed in strikes against Isis in Iraq. And in November 2014, it admitted accidentally killing two children in a strike in Syria.
The Al-Khan strike came with the coalition already under pressure over allegations it carried out a raid the previous day that killed Syrian soldiers, in the first such case.
In a letter to the UN security council and secretary general Ban Ki-moon, Syria accused the coalition of targeting an army camp in the eastern province of Deir Ezzor on Sunday, killing three soldiers and wounding 13.
The foreign ministry letter condemned the attack as “a flagrant aggression”
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