Monitor says air strikes kill 11 people north of Syria‘s Raqqa

BEIRUT (TIP): Air strikes killed at least 11 people, including four children, in a village north of the Syrian city of Raqqa overnight, a war monitoring group said on Wednesday. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said warplanes, thought to belong to the U.S.-led coalition against Islamic State, hit al-Salihiya village before midnight and also injured several civilians.

A spokesperson for the US-led coalition could not immediately be reached for comment. The US military has said it makes “extraordinary efforts” to avoid civilian deaths in its bombing runs in Syria and neighboring Iraq. The coalition has been supporting Syrian militias with air strikes and special forces in a campaign to isolate and capture Raqqa city, Islamic State’s base of operations in Syria.

The Syrian Democratic Forces, a US-backed alliance of Kurdish and Arab fighters, have seized territory from the jihadist group and advanced on Raqqa from the north, east and west. The Observatory said air strikes, also believed to be by coalition planes, killed 10 people who were driving through desert areas that link Islamic State-held parts of Raqqa province and the nearby Hama countryside earlier this week.