US-led air strikes kill 23 civilians in Syria - SOHR

Air strikes by the US-led opposition coalition in Syria killed 23 civilians on Wednesday in a Daesh-held village in eastern Deir Ezzor province, the war monitor said.

"At least 23 civilians, among them eight children and six women, were killed Wednesday before dawn by air strikes carried out by the US-led coalition, targeting a village controlled by Daesh on the eastern banks of the Euphrates river," UK-based SOHR said.

The war monitor, which gathers eye-witness reports from the ground, said the civilians were hiding inside a house and were all members of the same family.

US-backed forces are currently battling to capture the last scraps of Daesh-controlled territory in the area and on Tuesday took a village adjacent to the one that was hit, the monitor said.

A US military spokesman said a detailed assessment of the allegation of civilian casualties would be made but said the coalition strikes "only valid military targets."

"We apply rigorous standards to our targeting process and take extraordinary efforts to protect non-combatants," US Army Colonel Ryan Dillon said. 

Dillon also said on Wednesday that the coalition cleared six kilometres (four miles) of territory along the eastern bank of Euphrates river over the past day.

“Daesh is weak but still a threat -- terrorists lurking in Mid-Euphrates River Valley," the spokesman wrote on Twitter.

Disputed claims over cost of defeating Daesh

Daesh has lost the vast bulk of the territory it captured across Syria and Iraq in 2014, after a string of gruelling offensives by opposition, government and regime forces and their allies in the two countries.

The Iraqi government and Russia, which back the forces of Syria’s Bashar al Assad, have both declared victory over the militants.

The US-led coalition has admitted to unintentionally killing 801 civilians in the more than 28,000 air strikes it has conducted across Syria and Iraq since its formation in 2014.

Monitoring group Airwars says that number is well below the true civilian toll of the bombing campaign, estimating that almost 6,000 innocent lives have been lost.