A spokesperson for the National Security Council has said that the US will not apply a White House policy, barring drone strikes unless there is a “near certainty” of no civilian casualties, to current aerial operations in Iraq and Syria.

Caitlin Hayden said in an e-mail to Yahoo! News that the “near certainty” standard was intended to apply “only when we take direct action ‘outside areas of active hostilities”. She continued, “That description — outside areas of active hostilities — simply does not fit what we are seeing on the ground in Iraq and Syria right now.”

Up to 25 civilians were reportedly killed in the first US attacks with missiles and bombs, carried out on September 23. Many of those died in a US missile strike on positions of the insurgent faction Jabhat al-Nusra in Kafar Daryan (pictured) in Idlib Province in northwest Syria.

Hayden insisted in her e-mail that U.S. military operations inside Syria, “like all U.S. military operations, are being conducted consistently with the laws of armed conflict, proportionality and distinction”.

However, at a briefing last week for two House Foreign Affairs Committee members and two staffers, opposition leaders complained about the civilian deaths and the attack on Jabhat al-Nusra rather the Islamic State, the purported target of US operations.