US pounds 17 purported Daesh targets on Christmas Day

American warplanes carried out 17 attacks against the Daesh (ISIL) Takfiri terrorists on Christmas Day, the Pentagon says.

The strikes, five in Syria and 12 in Iraq, were conducted by fighter jets, bombers and unmanned drones as part of the ongoing Operation Inherent Resolve against alleged Daesh positions there, the Pentagon said in a Saturday statement.

In Syria, the operation officials noted that they “wounded” an ISIL militant near the city of Raqqah, and hit three of the terror group’s tactical units and one of its buildings near Manbij, where they managed to wound another militant.

A fourth tactical unit was “struck” near the town of Mare’, the statement added.

In Iraq, separate strikes in Fallujah, Mosul and Qayyarah targeted ISIL’s purported tunnels and tactical units.

Similar targets were also hit near Ramadi, a city Iraqi soldiers are in a final push to liberate after it fell to Daesh in May.

US warplanes also destroyed three bridges in the city of Sanjar.

Since August 2014, the United States and some of its allies have been conducting airstrikes against what they say are Daesh positions in Iraq. Some members of the US-led coalition have also been pounding purported Daesh positions inside Syria since September 2014, without any authorization from Damascus or a UN mandate.

However, the airstrikes have not dislodged the Daesh terrorists and have reportedly caused huge collateral damage, and civilian deaths.

At least a dozen civilians were killed in two aerial assaults by US military aircraft in Mosul on December 21, according to eyewitness and medical sources.

Additionally, the US has admitted that on December 18, a number of Iraqi soldiers were killed in a so-called “friendly-fire” involving American fighter jets.

In another similar incident, US air raids in the Syrian town of Ayyash in Deir al-Zour province killed four Army soldiers in the Saeqa military camp, according to the so-called Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which is affiliated to the foreign-backed Syria opposition.

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