(Zaman Al Wasl)- At least 20 civilians, including 14 children and 3 women, were killed Friday in a US-led airstrike hit eastern Deir Ezzor province as Kurdish-led forces backed by the International Coalition press to seize last pockets of the Daesh (ISIS), local sources said.
Casualties of the strike on al-Qurriyah village were mostly family members.
The day before, the U.S.-led coalition hit a mosque believed to be a military command post for Daesh in Deir Ezzor.
The strike "destroyed an ISIS command and control facility in a mosque" in Safafiyah town, the coalition said in a statement, using another name for Daesh, Anadolu Agency reported.
The coalition said the strike killed Daesh terrorists "who presented an imminent threat to our Syrian partner forces."
The coalition did not mention any civilian casualties from the strike.
Meanwhile, at least 19 US-backed fighters killed in car bomb attacks carried out by Daesh near the Iraqi border, activists said Thursday.
Daesh blasts rocked a checkpoint for the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) in Hawi Soussa and al-Basira villages.
In its turn, the SDF fighters backed by US-led coalition airstrikes has 47 Daesh militants had been killed in its major offensive on Daesh stronghold in Deir Ezzor.
Over the past few months, the coalition has carried out several strikes on mosques in northern Syria it said hosted Daesh terrorists, killing dozens of civilians.
ISIS overran large swathes of Syria and neighboring Iraq in 2014, proclaiming a "caliphate" across the land it controlled.
But the jihadist group has since lost most of its territory to various offensives in both countries.
In Syria, its presence has been reduced to parts of the vast Badia desert and the Hajin pocket in the eastern province of Deir Ezzor near the Iraqi border.
Meanwhile in Turkey, President Tayyip Erdogan met with U.S. Republican Senator Lindsey Graham to discuss the situation in Syria as the United States prepares to withdraw troops.
Graham, a prominent voice on foreign affairs in the U.S., met with Erdogan and other Turkish officials Friday for talks that were also expected to include a proposal for the creation of a "safe zone" in northeast Syria.
The visit comes days after a suicide bombing, claimed by IS, killed two U.S. service members and two American civilians in the northeastern town of Manbij.
Graham has said he is concerned that U.S. President Donald Trump's troop withdrawal announcement had emboldened Islamic State militants and created dangerous uncertainty for American allies.
The Pentagon identified three of the four Americans killed in the suicide bomb attack in Manbij — Army Chief Warrant Officer 2 Jonathan R. Farmer, 37, of Boynton Beach, Florida, who was based at Fort Campbell, Kentucky; Navy Chief Cryptologic Technician (Interpretive) Shannon M. Kent, 35, from upstate New York and based at Fort Meade, Maryland; and a civilian, Scott A. Wirtz, from St. Louis.
The Pentagon hasn't identified the fourth casualty, a civilian contractor.
Syria's war has killed more than 560,000 people since it erupted in 2011 with the brutal repression of anti-regime protests.
Zaman Al Wasl
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