US-led strikes leave dozen civilians dead in Syria’s Hasakah

A dozen civilians have lost their lives when the US-led coalition purportedly fighting the Daesh Takfiri terrorist group carried out a series of airstrikes on Syria’s northeastern province of Hasakah.

The so-called Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said on Saturday that at least 12 people had been killed the previous night as airstrikes and artillery fire by the Western military contingent struck the village of Hidaj, which is located in the southern sector of the province and controlled by Daesh.

The Britain-based monitor added that the civilians, including two women and their children, belonged to the same family.

The Observatory further noted that the latest deaths brought to “20 the number of civilians killed by the coalition over the past 24 hours east of the Euphrates River.”

Eight civilians were killed on Thursday, when the US-led coalition bombarded an area in Syria’s eastern province of Dayr al-Zawr.

Local sources told Syria’s official news agency SANA on May 1 that 25 people had been killed in US-led aerial attacks against al-Fadhel village near al-Shaddadi town in the southern part of Hasakah province, located 650 kilometers northeast of the capital Damascus.

The sources added that there were two elderly men among the deceased, noting that the fatalities mainly consisted of women and children.

The US-led coalition has been conducting airstrikes against what are said to be Daesh targets inside Syria since September 2014 without any authorization from the Damascus government or a UN mandate. 

The military alliance has repeatedly been accused of targeting and killing civilians. It has also been largely incapable of achieving its declared goal of destroying Daesh.

On May 2, Syria’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Expatriates, in two separate letters addressed to United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres and former rotating President of the UN Security Council Joanna Wronecka, called on the Security Council to take an immediate action, and stop war crimes and crimes against humanity being committed by the US-led force in the war-ravaged Arab country.

SS