Adding to the growing civilian
death toll caused by US airstrikes in Iraq and Syria, the US
overnight attacked the Syrian border town of Abu Kamal, along the key
Iraqi border crossing, killing at least 30 civilians in the process.
The US carried out the strikes at
3:00 am, targeting a series of apartment buildings in the town’s
residential area. Unsurprisingly, the apartments were full of
sleeping civilians, and also unsurprisingly, blowing up the
apartments killed a lot of them.
According to the Syrian
Observatory for Human Rights, ISIS is believed to have been using
some of the apartments in the targeted area. There is, however, no
sign that the apartments the US bombed contained any of the ISIS
fighters in question.
This is the latest in a growing
number of US strikes around Syria which have killed civilians, with
reports of at least 87 civilians killed in the last five days from US
and coalition strikes.
Abu Kamal is a hugely important
strategic holding of ISIS, though its value has dropped somewhat
since they lost most of their territory in Iraq’s Anbar Province.
Still, it is along the main highway connecting Syria’s Deir Ezzor
and Iraq, and has been contested by US-backed rebels intermittently,
albeit unsuccessfully.
Source,
links:
Comments
Post a Comment