U.S.-led air strikes killed at least 27 civilians including 10 children in a village held by Daesh (ISIS) in northeastern Syria Tuesday, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitor said.
"We don't know for the moment if the U.S.-led international coalition or Iraqi forces carried out the strike" on the village of Al-Qasr in the northeastern province of Hasakeh, the Britain-based monitor said.
The United States and partner countries are launching operations to liberate what it said were the final Daesh (ISIS) strongholds in Syria, the State Department said in a statement Tuesday.
The United States will also work with Turkey, Israel, Jordan, Iraq and Lebanon to secure their borders from Daesh, and will seek further contributions from regional partners and allies to stabilize liberated territories, the State Department said.
The massacre came as U.S.-backed Kurdish militias relaunched their campaign to seize the last territory Daesh controls in the east near the border with Iraq.
The Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), an alliance of Kurdish and Arab militias, had paused their battle after Turkey launched an assault in January against their northern Afrin region.
"We have rearranged our ranks," said Lilwa al-Abdallah, spokeswoman for the offensive in oil-rich Deir al-Zor province.
Daesh militants stepped up attacks in the region in recent weeks in a bid to reorganise, she told a news conference at an oilfield on the eastern bank of the Euphrates river.
"Our heroic forces will liberate these areas and secure the border. ... We welcome the support of the Iraqi forces."
Another SDF official in Deir al-Zor said that coordination with Iraqi troops had increased and that neither side would cross the border.
U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said last week that he expected a "re-energised" effort soon against the ultra-hardline militants in eastern Syria.
Syrian fighters, backed by U.S. air strikes and troops, have dealt heavy blows to Daesh but the jihadists still hold a swathe of land along the desert frontier with Iraq. They are widely expected to revert to guerrilla tactics if they lose the last remnants of their once self-styled "caliphate".
The SDF alliance, spearheaded by the Kurdish YPG, has seized vast tracts of territory from Daesh in the north and east with Washington's help.
Turkey's offensive against the YPG in Afrin, which Ankara sees as an extension of an outlawed Kurdish insurgency at home, led to a pause in the campaign against Daesh, the Pentagon said in March.(Agecnies)
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