The Syrian Institute for Justice, a nonprofit group that observes and documents cases of human rights violations in Syria, said it initially knew of about 90 civilian deaths resulting from Tuesday’s raids. The global medical humanitarian organization said it has not treated any war-wounded Syrians in the emergency room in the Ramtha government hospital – about 3 miles from the Syrian border – since the closure of Jordan’s northern border after the deadly June 21 suicide attack.
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Although a number of civilians comparable to the number killed in Nice reportedly died in the bombing Tuesday morning, American news outlets did not widely report on the issue.
It follows an intense backlash over the reported deaths on July 19 of at least 56 civilians, including children, in U.S.-led air strikes while fleeing the ISIL-held village of Al-Tukhar near Manbij.
While IS continues to fight hard within the center of Manbij using snipers, improvised explosive devices and “civilians as human shields”, he said they are “collapsing back”.
The US-led coalition has said it is investigating reports of civilian deaths in the strikes.
The US-led coalition has been backing the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), an alliance of Kurdish and Arab forces, to capture Manbij since last May.
A local military council allied to the SDF, which has captured part of Manbij after weeks of fighting, has set Isis fighters a 48-hour deadline beginning Thursday to leave the city.
A statement by the group called it a last-ditch effort to protect civilian lives and the “only and last” opportunity for ISIS militants to “leave the town alive”.
“One concern is that usually one would expect that a party to a conflict would be able to improve its civilian casualty, but it looks like the U.S.-led coalition is worsening, particularly in the Manbij area”, Neil Sammonds, Amnesty International’s lead researcher on Syria, told ABC News.
“We will conduct an investigation on any possible civilian casualties in this matter, as we always do, and we’ll be transparent about that”, Carter said during a briefing at an air base outside Washington.
French President Francois Hollande said on Thursday he had no immediate information on whether French planes were responsible for the air strike. And that they were from coalition planes. “We are striking in the framework of the coalition and are very careful in our strikes”, he said.
In his letter, al-Abdah condemned what he called a massacre and said the Syrian people have already suffered enough.
In Moscow, Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said US Secretary of State John Kerry had reiterated the West’s stance that Syrian President Bashar Assad must leave power, during a recent visit to Russia.
And there has also been worldwide consternation, with the United Nations children’s agency UNICEF saying it had received reports up to 20 children might have been killed in the incident.
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“UNICEF estimates that 35,000 children are trapped in and around Manbij with nowhere safe to go”, the agency’s representative in Syria, Hanaa Singer, said.
