Nearly two dozen civilians have been killed when the US-led coalition purportedly fighting the Daesh Takfiri terrorist group conducted a series of airstrikes in Syria’s embattled eastern province of Dayr al-Zawr.
Local sources told Syria’s official news agency SANA that the aerial attack hit Baghouz town in the province on Monday, leaving four people dead.
Hours later, the so-called Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported that 16 civilians, including seven children, lost their lives when US-led coalition warplanes pounded areas on the eastern bank of the Euphrates.
The developments came only two days after US-led military aircraft bombarded al-Tayyaneh town in the same Syrian province, leaving three people dead and several others injured.
The aerial assaults damaged some private and public property in the targeted area as well.
The US-led coalition has been conducting airstrikes and operations against what are said to be Daesh targets inside Syria since September 2014 without any authorization from the Damascus government or a United Nations mandate.
The military alliance has repeatedly been accused of targeting and killing civilians. It has also been largely incapable of achieving its declared goal of destroying Daesh.
Syria has on numerous occasions condemned airstrikes by the US-led coalition, asking the UN to force Washington and its allies to put an end to their military intervention in the Arab country.
On January 19, the Syrian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Expatriates, in two separate letters addressed to UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres and the former rotating president of the Security Council, Francisco Antonio Cortorreal, censured US-led coalition strikes conducted against al-Baghuz al-Tahtani village in Dayr al-Zawr a day earlier, saying the US-led warplanes had targeted dozens of families fleeing from areas controlled by Daesh.
Local sources, requesting anonymity, told SANA that 20 people were killed in the raid when US-led warplanes bombarded residential buildings in al-Baghuz al-Tahtani.
“This new crime is in line with the criminal acts that the US-led coalition is perpetrating systematically and on a daily basis against Syrian people, and in flagrant violation of Syria’s sovereignty and territorial integrity,” said the letters.
“The activities of this alliance are illegal as it has been formed outside the UN framework. Such acts have only contributed to the expansion of extremist terrorist organizations, especially Daesh. Cooperation and coordination between these terrorist groups and this alliance has been documented in numerous letters that [the] Syrian Arab Republic has sent to the Security Council,” added the letters.
The ministry also called on the UN Security Council to shoulder its responsibilities regarding the establishment of international peace and security, and put an immediate halt to crimes against humanity that were being carried out by this “rogue” coalition against Syrian civilians and infrastructure.
It also demanded that the Council take necessary measures to set up an international mechanism to punish the perpetrators of such crimes.