Coalition airstrike said to kill 4 Syrian regime soldiers

US-led forces deny they targeted army; Assad government confirms raids, calls them an ‘act of aggression’

By AFP and ToI Staff 7 December 2015, 11:46 am

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Smoke billows from buildings following a reported air strike in Damascus' rebel-held suburb of Zamalka on December 6, 2015. (AFP PHOTO / AMER ALMOHIBANY)

Four Syrian soldiers were killed and 13 injured when a bombing raid by the US-led coalition hit an army camp in the east of the country, a monitor said on Monday. The US-led coalition denied the report.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the air raid Sunday “by the international coalition” hit the camp in the west of Deir Ezzor province, “around two kilometers from an area controlled by the Islamic State group.”

The Observatory said it was the first time that a strike from the US-led coalition had killed Syrian government troops.

“Regime forces have never previously been hit by raids from the international coalition, which was targeting jihadist bases and oil tankers in Deir Ezzor,” Observatory director Rami Abdel Rahman said.

The Assad regime confirmed the airstrikes on its forces, calling them “an act of aggression.”

The US-led coalition fighting the Islamic State group denied its planes carried out such airstrikes.

“We’ve seen those Syrian reports but we did not conduct any strikes in that part of Deir Ezzor yesterday. So we see no evidence,” said Colonel Steve Warren, spokesman for the coalition.

He said the coalition’s only strikes in Deir Ezzor on Sunday were some 55 kilometers (34 miles) away from the area where the troops were allegedly killed.

The US-led coalition has been targeting IS in Syria since September last year, expanding a campaign that began with raids in neighboring Iraq.

Its operations have expanded further in recent days, partly in response to the deadly attacks in Paris claimed by IS.

On Sunday its jets hit IS positions in Raqa province, killing at least 49 people, mainly jihadists, according to the Observatory.

It said that eight children and five women were killed in the raids, but that it was not clear if they were connected with IS.

The monitor relies on a network of activists, medical staff and fighters on the ground who identify warplanes based on model, flight patterns and munition types.

Syria’s conflict has taken the lives of more than 250,000 people, and another four million have been forced to flee the country since it erupted in March 2011.