PHOTO: White Helmets rescuers at a mosque destroyed by US airstrikes in al-Jinah in northern Syria, March 2017 (Omar Haj Kaddour/AFP/Getty)
Claims are circulating that the US-led coalition has killed dozens of people in an airstrike in eastern Syria.
The airstrike was reportedly on an ice factory in an Islamic State-held area near the towns of al-Sousa and al-Baghouz Fawkani on Thursday.
Unconfirmed reports said 54 people, including 28 civilians, were slain and dozens were wounded, some critically. Most of the civilian casualties were Iraqis.
Col. Sean Ryan, a coalition spokesman, said the US or “partner forces may have conducted strikes in the vicinity”.
He said the coalition would assess the claims: “We have no further information at this time.”
The US military has routinely minimized and even denied strikes that have caused mass casualties in northern and eastern Syria.
The Assad regime’s Foreign Ministry claimed a “massacre” and an act of aggression by the “illegal coalition”.
