Tag Archives: U.S. coalition

Iran fires rockets at Iraqi airbase hours after funeral of slain commander

By Ahmed Aboulenein and Phil Stewart

BAGHDAD/WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Iran fired rockets early on Wednesday at Iraq’s al Asad airbase, which hosts U.S. forces, hours after the funeral of an Iranian commander whose killing in a U.S. drone strike has raised fears of a wider war in the Middle East.

Iranian news agency Mehr said Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps had targeted the base. Tehran has vowed retaliation for the killing of Iranian military commander Qassem Soleimani.

It was not immediately clear what the extent of damage or casualties was at the base.

U.S. President Donald Trump has been briefed on reports of an attack on U.S. facilities in Iraq and was monitoring the situation, White House spokeswoman Stephanie Grisham said.

“We are aware of the reports of attacks on U.S. facilities in Iraq. The president has been briefed and is monitoring the situation closely and consulting with his national security team,” Grisham said in a statement.

Earlier on Tuesday, U.S. Defense Secretary Mark Esper said the United States should anticipate retaliation from Iran over the killing in Iraq of Soleimani, commander of the elite Quds Force.

“I think we should expect that they will retaliate in some way, shape or form,” Esper told a news briefing at the Pentagon, adding that such retaliation could be through Iran-backed proxy groups outside of Iran or “by their own hand.”

“We’re prepared for any contingency. And then we will respond appropriately to whatever they do.”

(Reporting by Ahmed Aboulenein in Baghdad, Parisa Hafezi and Babak Dehghanpisheh in Dubai, Phil Stewart in Washington, Michelle Nichols at the United Nations, Steve Scherer in Ottawa and Robin Emmott in Brussels; Writing by Mark Heinrich and Sonya Hepinstall; Editing by Peter Cooney)

Shooting in the dark; Afghanistan’s endless war pits brother against brother

By Abdul Qadir Sediqi

KUNDUZ, Afghanistan (Reuters) – The 19-year-old Taliban deserter is haunted by the memory of the attack on a police checkpoint in northern Afghanistan in August.

The Taliban band of around 20 fighters began its assault at 10 pm, he recalled, and by sunrise, all twelve Afghan police were dead.

Kneeling in the blood-soaked sand of the bunker as he and his comrades checked the bodies for weapons and ammunition, the young militant made a terrible discovery – one of the dead men was his elder brother.

Two months later, he fled following an air strike that killed several of his band. Now hiding in Kunduz district, fearing reprisals by the Taliban for deserting, the young man and his father told their harrowing story on condition of anonymity.

“I faced the darkest moment of my life seeing my brother’s body covered with blood and dust,” the younger brother told Reuters, fear visible on his face as he sat inside a car. “For a while the daylight turned to a dark night as if someone put a black hood on my head.”

The father of the brothers said he volunteered the younger boy to fight for the Taliban after the militants learnt that the elder son was with the police.

The government accuses the Taliban of commonly using the tactic to intimidate families caught up in the 18-year-long war.

“The Taliban torture and even kill innocent people to make them to join, mostly in remote rural areas where people have no other option,” said Sediq Sediqqi, a spokesman for the Afghan government.

The militant group denies this, though it said it does pressurize families not to join the security services of a government it regards as illegitimate and propped up by foreign forces.

FINE BALANCE

The family, like many in the northern Kunduz province, make a difficult living subsistence farming wheat, rice and mung beans. To ease the hardship, the elder brother enlisted in police in 2006 to help support his family, his father said.

A few months later, he recalled Taliban representatives visiting his mud-brick home to persuade him to make a fateful choice – either he should make his elder son quit the police, or he should volunteer one of his seven other sons to join the militants.

“It was a difficult decision for the whole family, but we had no other choice: the Taliban were extorting us,” he said, a sense of resignation in his voice, on why he allowed his youngest son to join. “They blocked the water to our crops.”

He knew the impact his decision might have.

“Having a son in the police and giving the other to the Taliban means telling them to kill each other,” he said.

The Taliban now controls more territory than at any point since it was ousted from power by U.S.-led coalition forces in 2001. With that gain comes increasing friction with Afghans who have lived in what were previously government-held areas, experts said.

“The Taliban are not aliens: they are undeniable part of Afghan society,” said Atiqullah Amarkhel, a former general who served in the Afghan army between 1960 and 2009.

“Many families of members of the Afghan security forces are living in rural areas and most of these areas are either completely controlled or heavily influenced by the Taliban.”

Similar stories have emerged elsewhere in the country.

Hikmatullah, a sergeant in the Afghan army from the eastern Nangarhar province, said the Taliban imprisoned one of his younger brothers after he joined the security forces. They eventually released him, but after consulting with his father, he too joined the militant group.

“This decision was not his choice or desire, but he was forced, in fact the whole family was forced because we were frustrated from the daily torture,” Hikmatullah, who goes by only one name, said.

“Whenever I get into a clash with the Taliban, I feel that my brother is standing in front of me and I am firing at him.”

Zabihullah Mujahid, a Taliban spokesman, denied it coerced people to join.

“We sometime force those families not to serve in the front line with the Afghan police or army, because we don’t want them to lose their precious lives,” he said. “Joining us is their personal choice.”

The former Taliban fighter was deeply affected by his brother’s death in the raid. In October, after an Afghan airstrike killed five of his comrades in the Taliban, he fled.

He now lives away from the family’s land with his father and brother’s family.

“Whenever I look to the three children of my late brother, I feel guilty as if I am the killer,” he said. “I don’t forgive myself.”

(Additional reporting by Sardar Razmal in Kunduz and Ahmad Sultan in Nangarhar; Writing by Alasdair Pal; Editing by Simon Cameron-Moore)

Snipers, starvation and death: IS ‘caliphate’ ended in bloodbath

Kurdish people visit a cemetery in Hasaka governorate, Syria April 1, 2019. Picture taken April 1, 2019. REUTERS/Ali Hashisho

By John Davison

AL-HOL CAMP, Syria (Reuters) – Even when U.S. coalition air strikes and artillery paused for people to evacuate during lulls in fighting, the killing did not stop in Islamic State’s final enclave.

Snipers in areas controlled by Syria’s government near the village of Baghouz picked off women and children fetching water from the river or climbing the small hill to seek medical help in Kurdish-controlled territory, survivors said.

People died from their wounds and children starved.

“There were lines of bodies, men, women and children. I didn’t count them,” said Katrin Aleksandr, a Ukrainian woman who left Baghouz in eastern Syria in the last days of the fighting.

She lay in a hospital bed with her head stitched up, two black eyes and shrapnel wounds to her limbs. Her husband, a militant, was killed in the air strike that wounded her.

“Everything was on fire, including tents people lived in,” she said.

Those who lived through the final days of Islamic State’s self-declared caliphate said many people had stayed or were trapped in trenches, tunnels and tents in Baghouz.

Aleksandr and several other people interviewed by Reuters in camps and hospitals, including supporters and critics of Islamic State, gave separate but similar accounts.

They say bombardment by U.S.-backed forces and sniper fire from Syrian government areas killed scores, if not hundreds, as fighters and families scrabbled over food.

U.S.-backed forces declared last month the full territorial defeat of Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. Asked about events in Baghouz, the U.S.-led coalition said it uses “stringent methods to … allow halts to strikes if any civilians would be put in danger,” and investigates all reports of civilian casualties.

The Syrian government and Shi’ite Muslim militias deny targeting civilians in fighting.

Islamic State deployed car bombs and suicide belts during weeks of fighting for Baghouz. The Sunni Islamist group left a trail of destruction, killed thousands of people in the name of its narrow interpretation of Islam and helped cause many more deaths by trapping civilians in battles to drive it out.

But its adversaries have often used intense bombardment to end those battles in which civilians were killed, fuelling a humanitarian crisis and resentment among those who once lived in the areas it controlled.

In Mosul, the group’s Iraqi stronghold from 2014 to 2017, aerial and ground bombardment destroyed its center and killed thousands of civilians, according to rights groups.

Raqqa in northern Syria, where IS planned attacks in European capitals, was largely destroyed in 2017 before some militants were allowed to evacuate. Many of them are thought to have ended up in Baghouz.

IS supporters, those who tolerated the group and even some critics say its defeat has come at too high a cost in lives and destruction, creating anger the militants are likely to try to exploit as they wage a growing insurgency.

“There’s no shelter in Baghouz, just trenches and tents. Shells landed every 20 minutes. I left after an explosion killed my husband and two of my children,” said Salma Ibrahim, a 20-year-old Moroccan IS supporter at al-Hol camp where many displaced by violence now live.

“Of people who went to the river to get water, maybe half returned,” she said.

 

‘LIMBLESS CHILDREN’

Baghouz, now under the control of the Kurdish-led and U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), is separated by the Euphrates river from territory controlled by the Syrian army and its allies including Iraqi Shi’ite Muslim militias, who have been accused of revenge attacks against Sunnis.

With IS no longer holding any of eastern Syria, the Euphrates effectively demarcates rival areas of Kurdish control to its east and Syrian government control to the west.

Reporters have mostly been prevented from reaching Baghouz since the battle entered its final phase and ended in late March.

Some civilians said IS forced them to stay almost until the end.

“Fighters guarded women and children and wouldn’t let us go,” said Amal Susi, a 20-year-old Lebanese woman at al-Hol.

She said militants and families fought over bags of flour and scraps of meat.

“They would point their guns at each other and wrestle over flour. People starved,” she said. “When we finally left, we saw bodies of children missing limbs and heads.”

The U.S.-led coalition said it carried out 193 air and artillery strikes in Syria between March 10 and IS’s declared defeat on March 23, some resulting in secondary explosions. It said the SDF were “committed to enabling multiple opportunities to allow for civilians to escape harm.”

Militants kept civilians next to ammunition depots and hid in a network of tunnels, several people interviewed said.

An SDF fighter who participated in the battle said dozens of comrades were killed by mines planted by IS.

“The smell of burned bodies and explosives mixed when we entered Baghouz,” said the fighter, Chegovara Zerik. “Air strikes helped destroy tunnels. Without them we wouldn’t have been able to advance.”

“Most of the bodies were men and women fighters. Strikes only hit where gunfire was coming from. It was not a normal battle – women and boys also fought,” the fighter said.

Unverified videos posted on social media purported to show IS women fighting. Those interviewed said this might have happened but they did not witness it.

Many women described cowering in trenches.

“The reason most people did not leave is because everyone was scared,” said one British woman at al-Hol, who struggled to speak because of a mouth injury.

That included fear of revenge attacks, she said.

“One German girl, she got caught, then they (the SDF) were, like, “Why did you come?” and shot her in the head.”

The 22-year-old Londoner declined to give her name. Reuters could not verify her account.

The SDF said it was “impossible” any such incidents occurred among its ranks.

(Editing by Timothy Heritage)

U.S.-backed Syrian fighters advance in clashes with Islamic State: official

FILE PHOTO: Fighters of Syrian Democratic Forces ride on trucks as their convoy passes in Ain Issa, Syria October 16, 2017. REUTERS/Erik De Castro/File Photo

BEIRUT (Reuters) – The U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) have seized ground from Islamic State in a fierce battle to capture its last enclave in eastern Syria, an SDF official said on Sunday.

The SDF, backed by a U.S.-led coalition, began the assault on Saturday, seeking to wipe out the last remnants of the jihadist group’s “caliphate” in the SDF’s area of operations in eastern and northern Syria.

The enclave is close to the Iraqi border and comprises two villages. Islamic State (IS) also still retains territory in the part of Syria that is mostly under the control of the Russian- and Iranian-backed Syrian government.

SDF fighters had so far seized 41 positions but had faced counter-attacks early on Sunday that had been repelled, Mustafa Bali, head of the SDF media office, told Reuters.

“The clashes are ferocious naturally because the terrorist group is defending its last stronghold.”

President Donald Trump, who is planning to pull U.S. forces out of Syria, said on Wednesday he expected a formal announcement as early as this week that the coalition had reclaimed all the territory previously held by Islamic State.

Bali said 400 to 600 jihadists were estimated to be holed up in the enclave, including foreigners and other hardened fighters.

Between 500 to 1,000 civilians are also estimated to be inside, Bali said. More than 20,000 civilians were evacuated in the 10 days leading up to Saturday, he said.

“If we can, in a short time frame, get the (remaining) civilians out or isolate them, I believe that the coming few days will witness the military end of the terrorist organization in this area,” Bali said.

Senior SDF official Redur Xelil told Reuters on Saturday the force hoped to capture the area by the end of February, but cautioned that IS would continue to pose “great and serious” security threats even after that.

IS redrew the map of the Middle East in 2014 when it declared a caliphate across large areas of Syria and Iraq. But it steadily lost ground and its two main prizes – the Syrian city of Raqqa and Iraq’s Mosul – fell in 2017.

Spearheaded by the Kurdish YPG militia, the SDF has been the main U.S. partner in Syria.

A top U.S. general said last week Islamic State would pose an enduring threat following the U.S. withdrawal, as it still has leaders, fighters, facilitators and resources.

(Writing by Tom Perry; Editing by Frances Kerry)

The Battle against the fanatical Islamic State

A boy who just fled a village controlled by Islamic State fighters cries as he sits with his family on a bus before heading to the camp at Hammam Ali south of Mosul, Iraq, February 22, 2017.

(Reuters) – It was an awkward coalition riven by political and sectarian differences, facing an elusive, fanatical enemy dug into an urban maze of narrow streets and alleyways. So, could Iraq’s government really deliver on its vow to vanquish Islamic State?

In the end, the army, Shi’ite Muslim paramilitaries and Kurdish Peshmerga fighters mustered rare unity to end Islamic State’s reign of terror in Iraq’s second city Mosul, seat of the ultra-hardline Sunni insurgents’ “caliphate”.

Baghdad’s victory in July 2017 after nine months of fighting was the coup de grace for the caliphate and came three years after a jihadist juggernaut seized one third of Iraq.

Smoke rises after an air strike during fighting between members of the Syrian Democratic Forces and Islamic State militants in Raqqa, Syria, August 15, 2017.

Smoke rises after an air strike during fighting between members of the Syrian Democratic Forces and Islamic State militants in Raqqa, Syria, August 15, 2017. REUTERS/Zohra Bensemra/File Photo

But even with supportive U.S. air strikes, Baghdad’s triumph came at a devastating cost for the once-vibrant, multicultural city in northern Iraq and the surrounding region.

When Islamic State militants first arrived in Mosul in June 2014 after sweeping aside crumbling Iraqi army units, many Mosul residents initially welcomed them.

The militants were Sunni Muslims, like many in Mosul who had accused the forces of then-Shi’ite Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki of widespread sectarian abuses.

Islamic State consequently presented itself as Mosul’s savior. But as jihadists brandishing AK-47 assault rifles began imposing an Islamist doctrine even more brutal and mediaeval than al Qaeda, its popularity soon faded.

Maliki’s successor, Haider al-Abadi, had long been seen as an ineffective leader who could not make tough decisions.

However, a U.S.-backed campaign against IS in Mosul offered Abadi a chance to emerge as a steely statesman capable of taking on a group that had terrorized a sprawling city with beheadings in public squares while staging deadly attacks in the West.

A man cries as he carries his daughter while walking from an Islamic State-controlled part of Mosul towards Iraqi special forces soldiers during a battle in Mosul, Iraq, March 4, 2017

A man cries as he carries his daughter while walking from an Islamic State-controlled part of Mosul towards Iraqi special forces soldiers during a battle in Mosul, Iraq, March 4, 2017. REUTERS/Goran Tomasevic/File Photo

REIGN OF TERROR

Just smoking one cigarette, an act IS saw as anti-Islamic, earned you dozens of lashes. Children were used as informers. Women in minority communities were turned into sex slaves.

But taking back Mosul was never going to be easy.

Long before the first shot was fired, Abadi and his advisers and military commanders had to tread cautiously, taking into account sectarian and ethnic sensitivities that could splinter the united front he urgently needed to establish.

Iraqi and Kurdish intelligence agencies had recruited informers inside Mosul, from ex-soldiers and army officers to taxi drivers, who would face instant execution if caught.

Even if an alliance of convenience was struck, glossing over sectarian splits, Mosul itself posed formidable physical obstacles.

Key districts consisted of ancient little streets and alleyways inaccessible to tanks and armored vehicles, and they were so densely populated that U.S.-led coalition air strikes risked heavy civilian casualties.

So, street by street, house by house, fighting was unavoidable.

Such challenges first popped up in Mosul’s hinterland as Kurdish forces slowly advanced against fierce IS resistance.

In one village, a single IS sniper hunkered down in a house held up hundreds of Kurdish fighters, the U.S. special forces advising them and 40 of their vehicles. Eventually, his rifle went silent after three air strikes on the house.

As pro-government forces inched forward, the United Nations warned of a possible humanitarian disaster and expressed fear that jihadists could seize civilians for use as human shields, and gun down anyone trying to escape.

IS fighters – both Iraqis and foreigners – were experts at carrying out suicide bombings and assembling homemade bombs. Many houses were booby-trapped. Iraqi military commanders had to factor these lurking perils into their gameplan.

In interviews, IS insurgents shed light on what Iraqi forces were up against. They were quite open about their ideology and what they were willing to do to transform the Middle East.

One man said he had used rape as a weapon of war against more than 200 women from Iraqi minorities, and had killed 500 people.

Iraqi Special Operations Forces arrest a person suspected of belonging to Islamic State militants in western Mosul, Iraq, February 26, 2017.

Iraqi Special Operations Forces arrest a person suspected of belonging to Islamic State militants in western Mosul, Iraq, February 26, 2017. REUTERS/Alaa Al-Marjani/File Photo

DEADLY OBSTACLE COURSE

After months of grueling fighting, Iraqi forces finally attained the outskirts of Mosul, but any celebrations were premature. Bombs littered dusty roads. Car bombs were exploding.

A Mosul resident explained that his child no longer flinched as explosions shook his street because many people, including the young, had grown numb to the daily bloodshed.

Each side resorted to desperate measures to gain an edge.

In north Mosul, people walked by fly-infested, bloated corpses of militants who had been left on roadsides for two weeks. Iraqi soldiers explained that the stinking bodies had been left there to send a clear message to residents – don’t join IS or you will suffer the same fate.

A woman injured in a mortar attack is treated by medics in a field clinic as Iraqi forces battle with Islamic State militants, in western Mosul, Iraq, March 2, 2017.

A woman injured in a mortar attack is treated by medics in a field clinic as Iraqi forces battle with Islamic State militants, in western Mosul, Iraq, March 2, 2017. REUTERS/Zohra Bensemra/File Photo

Caught in the middle were civilians who had suffered under the IS reign of terror for three years and were now wondering if they would survive a relentless battle to “liberate” them.

Parents waited patiently after weeks of fighting for a largely unknowable right moment to make a dash for Iraqi government lines, clutching their children, risking a run-in with jihadists from places as far away as Chechnya.

As much of east and west Mosul was pulverized by coalition air strikes or IS truck and car bombs, the city was reduced to row after row of collapsed or gutted housing.

In the end, IS suffered its most decisive defeat and watched their self-proclaimed caliphate evaporate in Iraq, then in Syria as Kurdish-led forces retook Raqqa, IS’s urban stronghold there.

 

FUTURE CHALLENGES

But those victories will be followed by tough questions about the future of both Iraq and Syria.

Preserving the shaky understanding forged between the different communities in the run-up to the Mosul campaign will be essential to saving Iraq as a state in the future.

It did not take long for the Mosul coalition to fray.

In October, Iraqi forces dislodged Kurdish Peshmerga fighters from the oil city of Kirkuk and other disputed areas and Baghdad imposed curbed air travel to and from the semi-autonomous Kurdistan region in retaliation for a Kurdish independence referendum held in northern Iraq in September.

The battle for Raqqa, which became IS’s operational base in Syria, had a different feel to it as U.S.-backed Kurds and Arabs in the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) tightened their siege.

The fighting seemed slower and more measured, step by step along abandoned streets where journalists were given access.

In the weeks before Raqqa’s fall in October, young female SDF fighters faced off against hardened militants and suffered losses. But that did not curb their enthusiasm and some said they would eventually like to join Kurdish PKK militants in Turkey and help advance their 33-year-old insurgency there.

The victors in Iraq and Syria now face new challenges as they rebuild cities shattered by the showdown with IS.

People cross a makeshift ladder in a village near Raqqa after a bridge was destroyed in fighting between the U.S.-led coalition and Islamic State, in Raqqa, Syria, June 16, 2017.

People cross a makeshift ladder in a village near Raqqa after a bridge was destroyed in fighting between the U.S.-led coalition and Islamic State, in Raqqa, Syria, June 16, 2017. REUTERS/Goran Tomasevic/File Photo

After IS’s defeat in Raqqa, Raqqa residents formed a council to run the city but they had no budget when it was first set up, just residents streaming into their tin, run-down headquarters demanding everything from instant jobs to getting their damaged farmland back.

Syrian Kurdish fighters were inspired by the ideas of Abdullah Ocalan, head of the PKK militants who has been imprisoned in Turkey for almost 20 years.

Turkey views the political rise of Syria’s Kurds as a threat to its national security and is fiercely opposed to the idea of Kurdish autonomy on its doorstep.

The Kurdish groups who led the fight against Islamic State in its former capital Raqqa must now navigate a complex peace to avoid ethnic tension with the city’s Arab majority and to secure critical U.S. aid.

So, life for Raqqa’s victors will remain fraught with risk.

 

(Reporting by Michael Georgy; editing by Mark Heinrich)

 

Turkey’s Erdogan says U.S. has no excuse to keep Gulen

Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan makes a speech during a meeting at the Presidential Palace in Ankara, Turkey, August 24, 2016.

ANKARA (Reuters) – Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan on Wednesday said he would tell U.S. Vice President Joe Biden that Washington has “no excuse” for not handing over the Pennsylvania-based cleric blamed for last month’s failed coup.

Erdogan, who is due to meet with Biden in Ankara later on Wednesday, said Turkey would continue to provide U.S. officials with documents to demand the extradition of Fethullah Gulen, who has lived in self-imposed exile in the United States since 1999.

Gulen, once an Erdogan ally, denies any involvement in the July 15 coup attempt and has condemned it. But Turkish officials say a network of Gulen supporters for years infiltrated Turkey’s military and public offices to create a “parallel state”.

“We will tell him that FETO’s leader is in your country,” Erdogan said, using an acronym for “Gulenist Terror Organisation”, the name Ankara has given Gulen’s network. “If a country wants a criminal in your country to be extradited, you have no rights to argue with that.”

Erdogan said Turkey and Washington were strategic partners and keeping Gulen would not benefit the United States.

Biden, who arrived in Turkey on Wednesday, was guided by Turkish officials around the parliament, which was damaged during the coup attempt. He is also expected to meet with the prime minister.

Rogue troops commandeered tanks, jets and helicopters to attack state institutions in Istanbul and Ankara last month in the failed coup bid that killed 240 people and triggered a massive purge of thousands of suspected Gulen followers in Turkey’s armed forces and civil service.

Washington has said it needs clear evidence to extradite Gulen. Its failure to do so – and the perception of a slow response to the coup from Western allies – has angered Erdogan and chilled relations with Washington and the European Union.

The U.S. State Department has confirmed documents submitted by Ankara constituted a formal extradition request, although not on issues related to the coup.

Hours before Biden’s arrival, Turkish forces launched a major operation inside Syria to clear Islamic State militants out of the Syrian frontier town Jarablus, backed by U.S.-led coalition warplanes.

Turkey is both a NATO member and part of the U.S. coalition in the fight against Islamic State in Syria and Iraq.

But U.S.-Ankara relations have been complicated by that conflict. Washington backs the Syrian Kurdish YPG rebels against Islamic State. Ankara is worried the YPG’s advance emboldens Kurdish insurgents in its mainly Kurdish southeast.

(Reporting by Ayla Jean Yackley and Ece Toksabay; writing by Patrick Markey; Editing by David Dolan)

Syrian opposition calls for suspension of U.S. led air strikes

Men make their way through the rubble of damaged buildings at a site hit by air strikes in Idlib city, Syria

BEIRUT (Reuters) – The head of the opposition Syrian National Coalition called for a suspension of the U.S.-led air campaign against Islamic State in Syria while reports of dozens of civilian deaths from air strikes around the northern city of Manbij are investigated.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said at least 56 civilians were killed in air strikes north of Manbij on Tuesday, a day after it said 21 civilians were killed in a northern district of the besieged Islamic State-held city.

SNC president Anas al-Abdah said the strikes should be halted while the incidents were investigated, according to a statement issued late on Wednesday, and warned that the killing of civilians by the U.S.-led air campaign would “prove to be a recruitment tool for terrorist organizations”.

“It is essential that such investigation not only result in revised rules of procedure for future operations, but also inform accountability for those responsible for such major violations,” Abdah wrote in a letter to foreign ministers of countries in the anti-Islamic State alliance.

U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter said on Wednesday the U.S.-led force would look into the reports of civilian casualties around Manbij.

The Observatory said the dead from Tuesday’s strike included 11 children. Pictures on social media purporting to be from the scene showed dust-covered corpses of two young children next to rubble.

Syria’s foreign ministry said Tuesday’s air strike, which hit the village of Toukhar north of Manbij, was carried out by French forces, while Monday’s strike was by U.S. jets.

“(Syria) condemns, with the strongest terms, the two bloody massacres perpetrated by the French and U.S. warplanes and those affiliated to the so-called international coalition which send their missiles and bombs to the civilians instead of directing them to the terrorist gangs,” it said in a letter sent to the United Nations this week, according to state news agency SANA.

A spokesman for the U.S.-led alliance said there were “multiple national aircraft providing strikes in Manbij. So how the Syrian government knows who conducted what strike, I question.”

The Western-backed Free Syrian Army, an umbrella grouping of factions which has fought against both President Bashar al-Assad and against Islamic State militants, also condemned what it called the “shocking massacres” near Manbij.

“We will not allow any crime to be justified under the pretext of combating terrorism,” it said in a statement signed by more than 30 armed factions.

(This story corrects spelling of village in paragraph 7)

(Reporting by Dominic Evans)

Suspected U.S. Coalition strikes kill 56 civilians in IS held city

Syria Democratic Forces (SDF) ride vehicles along a road near Manbij, in Aleppo Governorate, Syria,

BEIRUT (Reuters) – At least 56 civilians were killed on Tuesday in air strikes north of the besieged Islamic State-held city of Manbij in northern Syria, and residents said they believed the attack was carried out by U.S.-led warplanes, a monitoring group said.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the dead included 11 children, and that dozens more people were wounded.

The U.S.-backed Syria Democratic Forces (SDF), an alliance of Kurdish and Arab fighters, launched an offensive at the end of May to seize the last territory held by Islamic State (IS) insurgents on Syria’s frontier with Turkey.

Supported by U.S. coalition air strikes, the SDF has surrounded and fought their way into parts of the city, but Islamic State attacks still occur in some areas of the surrounding countryside.

On Monday, 21 people were killed in raids also believed to have been conducted by U.S.-led coalition aircraft on Manbij’s northern Hazawneh quarter.

In a statement, rights watchdog Amnesty International said the U.S.-led coalition must do more to prevent civilian deaths.

“Anyone responsible for violations of international humanitarian law must be brought to justice and victims and their families should receive full reparation,” Amnesty’s interim Middle East director Magdalena Mughrabi said.

Progress into Manbij city has been slow. The militants have deployed snipers, planted mines and prevented civilians from leaving, hampering efforts to bomb the city without causing heavy casualties, according to Kurdish sources.

The Observatory said at least 104 civilians have died from air strikes since the start of the Manbij offensive in late May.

Colonel Chris Garver, a spokesman for the U.S. coalition against Islamic State in Syria and Iraq, said it was looking into reports of civilian deaths but was being “extraordinarily careful to make sure” air strikes were killing IS fighters.

“Around Manbij, the Syrian Arab Coalition (SAC – Arab groups within the SDF), which is leading that fight, is being very slow and deliberate in that fight to protect civilians which we know are inside.”

The U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights recently voiced concern for the roughly 70,000 civilians believed to be trapped between warring parties in Manbij.

“Civilians have…reportedly been killed if they leave their homes or attempt to flee. Families are unable to access local cemeteries to bury their relatives who have died or been killed, and are burying them in their gardens or keeping the corpses in bunkers,” Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein said.

“The town has no electricity or water at present, and no medical facilities are known to be operating. As the SDF closes in on the city, (Islamic State) has not permitted civilians to leave the area.”

The coalition said it has conducted more than 450 strikes in the vicinity of Manbij. It routinely investigates civilian deaths and publishes the results of confirmed incidents.

Between Sept. 10, 2015 and Feb. 2, 2016, coalition air strikes in Iraq and Syria probably killed 20 civilians and injured 11 others, the U.S. Central Command said in April.

On Tuesday, the coalition said the SAC captured an IS command center in western Manbij on Sunday that was concealed in a hospital and was also being used as a logistics hub.

The SAC had also taken a significant area of the city during the operation, giving civilians an opportunity to flee, a statement from the Combined Joint Task Force said.

(Reporting by Lisa Barrington in Beirut. Additional reporting by John Davison and Stephen Kalin in Baghdad; editing by Mark Heinrich)

Turkish artillery, U.S. -led coalition jets pound Islamic State in Syria

By Humeyra Pamuk

KILIS, Turkey (Reuters) – Turkish artillery pounded Islamic State targets in northern Syria overnight and the U.S.-led coalition carried out air strikes, killing 28 militants near a Turkish border town repeatedly hit by rocket fire, Turkish military sources said.

The artillery strikes near Kilis, north of the Syrian city of Aleppo, started at about 8 p.m. (1700 GMT) and ended in the morning, the sources said. Intelligence reports had suggested the militants were preparing attacks, they said.

The air strikes destroyed a two-storey building used by the militants as a base, along with 11 fortified defensive positions, they said. The Turkish and coalition operations targeted an area about 10 km (6 miles) south of the border.

Turkey’s armed forces have stepped up attacks on Islamic State in Syria in recent weeks after rockets fired by the group repeatedly landed in Kilis, in what appeared to be a sustained and deliberate assault. More than a dozen hit the town last week alone.

Gunfire and occasional blasts from across the border could be heard on Wednesday from a hill in Kilis, which is home to more than 100,000 Syrian refugees.

Abdullah Karasu, a Kilis resident who works in a packaging firm, said he came to the hill every day to watch the action on the other side of the border, partly because it was a safer place to be than in the town center.

“I am not going to work anymore because the office is closed due to the rockets,” he said, standing with his son. Fewer rockets had landed in Turkey over the past three days, perhaps because of the military response, he said.

“But I doubt it’s finished … This silence is ominous. It’s almost as unnerving as the rockets landing,” he told Reuters.

NATO member Turkey was initially a reluctant partner in the U.S.-led coalition fighting Islamic State and faced criticism in the earlier stages of the Syrian war for failing to stop foreign fighters crossing its borders and joining the militant group.

But it has suffered several attacks blamed on the radical militant group, including two suicide bombings in Istanbul this year. Those attacks targeted foreign tourists, killing a total of 16 people, most of them German and Israeli.

President Tayyip Erdogan said on Wednesday that Turkey’s armed forces had killed 3,000 Islamic State fighters in Syria and Iraq, where Turkish soldiers are training local forces to fight the insurgents. He did not give a time frame.

(Additional reporting by Tulay Karadeniz in Ankara; Writing by Daren Butler; Editing by Nick Tattersall and Louise Ireland)