A Syrian group opposed to the country’s autocratic leader, Bashar al-Assad, says airstrikes by the U.S.-led coalition killed 52 civilians.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights called the alleged killings a “massacre” committed under the “pretext” of targeting ISIS militants.
The London-based organization said the dead, in a village northeast of the city of Aleppo, included seven children and nine women, and that 13 civilians were missing, so the death toll could rise.
The organization published the two-paragraph statement on its website Saturday, but it did not say when the alleged civilian deaths occurred.
CNN could not immediately confirm the report.
Report: U.S. has ‘no information to corroborate’ the allegation
U.S. military officials had no immediate response to CNN on Sunday morning.
But in an email to The McClatchy Company newspapers, U.S. Central Command spokesman Col. Patrick S. Ryder said, “We currently have no information to corroborate allegations that coalition airstrikes resulted in civilian casualties.” He added, “Regardless, we take all allegations seriously and will look into them further.”
The U.S. government has cited the observatory’s data in the past. For example, in May 2014, the State Department’s official blog noted that “The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights currently estimates that some 150,000 Syrians have perished in that country’s ongoing conflict.”
Group calls for perpetrators to be referred to courts
“We in SOHR condemn in the strongest terms this massacre committed by the U.S led coalition under the pretext of targeting the IS in the village,” the observatory’s statement said Saturday, “and we call the coalition countries to refer who committed this massacre to the courts, as we renew our calls to neutralize all civilians areas from military operations by all parties.”
The U.S.-led military coalition said Friday that it had launched 18 air strikes against ISIS, which calls itself the Islamic State, in Syria and Iraq since early Thursday. The coalition, formed in October 2014 to fight the ISIS terrorist group, includes Bahrain, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates.
A fearsome toll
Syria has been wracked by civil war for four years, with a fearsome toll of death, destruction and refugees.
SOHR has in the past been accused of selective reporting of the atrocities, publicizing only those committed by the al-Assad regime and ignoring those committed by his opponents. It has also been criticized as essentially a one-man show, run in Britain by a man who left Syria more than 10 years ago, and for failing to make its methodology public.
The situation in Syria is complicated. The U.S. has called for al-Assad to leave power. Yet is it conducting airstrikes against ISIS, which is also opposed to al-Assad.