US airstrike on Aleppo’s mosque kills many worshipers

At least 42 Syrian civilians have lost their lives when US warplanes bombed a mosque full of worshipers overnight in a village west of Aleppo.

According to Press TV, the so-called Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said on Friday more than 100 people were also wounded in the air raid on the village of al-Jineh, just over 30 km west of Aleppo.

The Head of the London-based observatory Rami Abdel Rahman said the raids targeted the mosque during evening prayers. 

The US military confirmed that it had carried out a deadly airstrike in northern Syria and would investigate reports that civilians were killed when a mosque was struck in the raid.

The observatory said many people were still trapped under the collapsed mosque as rescue workers struggled to pull survivors from rubble, and dozens of residents were still unaccounted for.

Jineh is in the western Aleppo countryside, which along with Idlib is home to hundreds of thousands of Syrians displaced by fighting in other areas.

Abu Muhammed, a village resident, told AFP that he “heard powerful explosions when the mosque was hit. It was right after the prayer at a time where there are usually religious lessons for men in it.”

“I saw 15 bodies and lots of body parts in the debris when I arrived. We couldn’t even recognize some of the bodies,” he added.

The US-led coalition has been conducting airstrikes against what are said to be Daesh terrorists inside Syria since September 2014 without any authorization from the Damascus government or a UN mandate. It has also been involved in a similar campaign in neighboring Iraq.

The alliance has on many occasions attacked Syrian civilians, military and infrastructure under the guise of fighting the terror group. 

ME