U.S. Led Raids Target Islamic State in Aleppo
U.S. led coalition strikes bombed Islamic State fighters battling rival insurgents belonging to Syria’s al-Qaida affiliate Jabhat al-Nusra in northern Syria overnight in a first such intervention, AFP reports
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights described the raids in northern Aleppo as an intervention on the side of rival rebels, which include Jabhat al-Nusra and Ahrar al-Sham, both of which have been targeted previously by US-led coalition strikes.
“The coalition carried out at least four strikes overnight, targeting Islamic State positions in the town of Suran,” the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.
Aleppo is currently divided between regime and opposition control. Last week, ISIS seized the town of Suran and began advancing toward the town of Azaz near the Turkish border, threatening to cut off key rebel supply routes to Aleppo.
“It’s the first time that the international coalition has supported non-Kurdish opposition forces fighting the Islamic State,” Observatory director Rami Abdel Rahman told AFP.
The strikes follows repeated calls by opposition groups for U.S. coalition strikes to deter ISIS from taking ground in the north of Syria and have questioned why the U.S.-led strikes against the group have not focused on bombing the jihadists around Aleppo city.
Syrian opposition leaders have previously accused the Syrian government of collaborating with the Islamic State, essentially leaving the militants untouched as they launch offensives against rebels groups, despite claiming to be to be fighting terrorism in the country.
Further complicating matters, Jabhat al-Nusra and Ahrar al-Sham have played a key role in recent rebel gains against government forces in the province of Idlib.
Meanwhile, a couple and their five children were allegedly killed overnight by U.S.-led coalition strikes in Aleppo, raising the number of civilians killed in the strikes to 148 since they began in September
Their deaths “bring the number of Syrian civilians killed in coalition air strikes since September 23 to 148, including 48 children and 32 women,” the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.
The Pentagon has generally denied that U.S.-led coalition strikes have killed any civilians. However in May, U.S. officials acknowledged for the first time that one of its air campaigns in Aleppo had killed two children in a November 2014 raid.
U.N. Security Council Expressed Outrage Over Continued Indiscriminate Attacks on Civilian Areas in Syria
The U.N. Security Council has expressed outrage over continued indiscriminate attacks on civilians areas in Syria, including barrel bombings that Western powers claim only the government is capable of carrying out, Reuters reports
At least 71 people, most of them civilians, were killed in Syria’s Aleppo province by barrel bombs dropped from government helicopters last Saturday in one of the worst massacres perpetrated by the government so far this year.
Last week, the U.N. envoy to Syria condemned the government’s aerial strikes of civilian areas as “completely unacceptable,” while the outgoing U.N. humanitarian chief Valarie Amos urged world powers to take collective action to put an end to the carnage in Syria.
The statements came amid reports that May was the bloodiest month so far this year in Syria, with at least 6,657 people killed throughout the country. The toll includes at least 1,285 civilians, more than half of whom were killed in government airstrikes, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.
The use of barrel bombs, containers packed with explosives and projectiles that are dropped from helicopters, has been widely documented by international human rights organizations.
In February, Human Rights Watch group accused Syria of dropping barrel bombs on hundreds of sites in 2014, violating the U.N. Security resolution condemning their use.
In an interview with the BBC the same month, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad denied accusations that his forces had used barrel bombs, insisting that the army uses bullets, missiles and bombs. “There are no barrel bombs; we don’t have barrels,” he said.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported that the government strikes hit a public square in the opposition-held village of al-Janudiya in the west of Idlib province.
Insurgent groups including al-Qaida’s affiliate in Syria have been making gains in Idlib since March when they seized control of the provincial capital and the major town of Jisr al-Shughour the following month.
The insurgents have been trying to push government forces out of the regime’s few remaining bases in the province, putting the insurgents closer to the neighboring provinces of Latakia and Hama,strongholds of President Assad.
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