A US-led coalition strike is reported to have killed 33 civilians in northern Syria, as the Pentagon yesterday announced reinforcements to allies battling the Islamic State group in Raqa.
The suspected coalition air raid hit a school being used as a temporary shelter for displaced families between IS’ main stronghold in Raqa city and Tabqa, a key town it controls further west.
The US-led coalition has been carrying out air strikes against IS in Syria since 2014 and yesterday upped the ante with airlifts and fire support for allied forces on the ground, the Pentagon said.
Senior diplomats from the 68-member alliance met in Washington yesterday to hear details of US President Donald Trump’s promised tough new strategy to eradicate the militant group in Iraq and Syria.
As they gathered, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group said a coalition air strike early Tuesday had killed dozens near the town of Al-Mansura, about 30 kilometres  west of Raqa.
“We can now confirm that 33 people were killed, and they were displaced civilians from Raqa, Aleppo and Homs,” said Observatory head Rami Abdel Rahman.”Only two people were pulled out alive.”
A statement from the coalition said it had carried out 18 strikes near Raqa on Tuesday, and a Pentagon spokesman said the coalition would investigate the reported deaths.
“Since we have conducted several strikes near Raqa we will provide this information to our civilian casualty team for further investigation,” he said.
“Raqa is Being Slaughtered Silently,” an activist group that publishes news from IS-held territory in Syria, blamed the coalition for the strike.
“The school that was targeted hosts nearly 50 displaced families,” it said.
Earlier this month, the coalition said its campaign in Syria and Iraq had unintentionally killed at least 220 civilians, but monitors say the real number is far higher.
In addition to its aerial sorties, the US has several hundred troops on the ground in Syria supporting the anti-IS offensive by the Syrian Democratic Forces, an alliance of Kurdish and Arab fighters.
An SDF commander said yesterday that US troops had been airlifted in to back the battle for Tabqa, a key town on the Euphrates River where senior IS commanders are based and where the group’s Western hostages were once held.
“US forces and fighters from the Syrian Democratic Forces were helicoptered to 15 kilometres west of Tabqa,” which lies on the southern bank of the Euphrates River, an SDF commander said.
Allied SDF fighters also crossed in boats from their positions on the northern bank of the river to meet up with the US forces on the southern bank.
A US defence official said yesterday, under condition of anonymity, that US artillery was being used in the operation to seize the Tabqa dam.
Another official, Pentagon spokesman Adrian Rankine-Galloway, said “coalition forces are assisting...with airlift and fire support in an operation to seize the Tabqa dam.”
IS is under pressure from several directions in northern Syria, with Russia supporting its Syrian ally President Bashar al-Assad on one front and Turkey providing air cover for rebel groups battling the militants on another. The escalating violence comes just a day before a new round of UN-brokered peace talks in Geneva hosted by UN special envoy Staffan de Mistura.
In Moscow yesterday for final meetings before the talks, de Mistura said the developments “raise concerns”.
“We must seek to achieve a political process as quickly as possible,” he said.
De Mistura will travel to rebel backer Ankara today and will then return to Switzerland to lead the talks.