Fresh US-led airstrikes leave two civilians dead, several injured in eastern Syria

At least two civilians have lost their lives and several others sustained injuries when the US-led coalition purportedly fighting the Daesh Takfiri terrorist group carried out a string of airstrikes against Syria’s eastern province of Dayr al-Zawr.

Local sources, requesting anonymity, told Syria’s official news agency SANA that the airborne assaults targeted residential buildings in the town of al-Susah, killing a couple and injuring a number of their family members, mostly women and children.

‘US-led coalition in denial over civilian deaths in Raqqah’

Meanwhile, Amnesty International says the United States-led coalition is "deeply in denial" about the number of civilians killed during an offensive it launched last year to dislodge Daesh Takfiri terrorists from Syria’s northern city of Raqqah.

The Britain-based rights organization, in a statement released on Tuesday, condemned the military contingent’s position on the findings of a June 5 report about the four-month-long assault to flush the extremists out of the city.

“The coalition's knee-jerk reactions are long on rhetoric and short on detail,” Donatella Rovera, a senior adviser at Amnesty International, said.

“They lay bare how deeply in denial the coalition leadership is about its failure to protect civilians caught in conflict,” she added. 

“Unless the coalition learns from its mistakes in Raqqah - and Mosul beforehand - it will be doomed to repeat them, with civilians again paying a devastating price,” Rovera pointed out.

The Amnesty International report, titled War of annihilation: Devastating Toll on Civilians, Raqqah - Syria, includes field investigations from researchers, who visited 42 sites across the city which the US-led coalition had attacked.

It found that hundreds of civilians had been killed during the coalition's military offensive to eliminate Daesh from Raqqah. 

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.

Syria’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Expatriates, in two separate letters addressed to United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres and the former President of the UN Security Council Vasily Nebenzya on June 5, condemned the continuing attacks by the US-led coalition against innocent Syrians, and its assaults on the sovereignty, unity and territorial integrity of the conflict-plagued Arab country.

The letters further noted that the “illegal” US-led coalition continues to perpetrate massacres against Syrian civilians, leaving scores of people, including elderly people, women and children, dead over the past few days and destroying homes as well as civilian properties and infrastructure in targeted villages.

The Syrian foreign ministry added that the US-led coalition is devoid of any international legitimacy, and has bombarded people in the provinces of Hasakah, Raqqah and Dayr al-Zawr after they did not agree to support US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) militants.

“The United States has organized these militants in a bid to target the positions of the Syrian army, and recapture areas liberated by the Syrian army soldiers and their allies from the menace of terrorism,” the letters pointed out.

They noted, “The United States has on occasions offered direct support to Daesh Takfiri terrorist group – the latest of which was on May 24 when US-led fighter aircraft struck Syrian army military sites between Albu Kamal border town and Hmeimim Air Base less than 24 hours after government forces thwarted Daesh assaults on its positions.”

“The US-led coalition’s continued war crimes and crimes against humanity against Syrian people, its support for terrorism and use of terrorists and separatist militants to achieve its despicable political purposes confirm that the sole purpose of this contingent is to undermine Syria’s sovereignty, unity and territorial integrity, and prolong its crisis,” the Syrian foreign ministry pointed out.

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