At least 42 Syrian civilians were killed and over 100 injured when US warplanes bombed a mosque full of worshipers during evening prayers on Thursday.
The air strikes hit the village of al-Jineh, just over 30 km west of Aleppo according to the so-called Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
US Central Command admitted it carried out a strike targeting al-Qaeda militants nearby but say it did not target a house of worship
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The Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has called US troops in Syria invaders because under international law foreign governments cannot deploy troops to sovereign countries.
Press TV reports:
The US military confirmed that it had carried out a deadly airstrike in northern Syria and would investigate reports that civilians were killed when a mosque was struck in the raid.
The observatory said many people were still trapped under the collapsed mosque as rescue workers struggled to pull survivors from rubble, and dozens of residents were still unaccounted for.
Jineh is in the western Aleppo countryside, which along with Idlib is home to hundreds of thousands of Syrians displaced by fighting in other areas.
Abu Muhammed, a village resident, told AFP he heard powerful explosions when the mosque was hit. “It was right after the prayer at a time where there are usually religious lessons for men in it,” he said.
“I saw 15 bodies and lots of body parts in the debris when I arrived. We couldn’t even recognize some of the bodies,” he added.
The US-led coalition has been conducting airstrikes against what are said to be Daesh terrorists inside Syria since September 2014 without any authorization from the Damascus government or a UN mandate. It has alo been involved in a similar campaign in neighboring Iraq.
The alliance has on many occasions attacked Syrian civilians, military and infrastructure under the guise of fighting the terror group.
There are also reports that the US-led attacks have on numerous occasions hampered counterterrorism operations by Syrian armed forces.
The latest US air raid came just after Syria contacted the United Nations to warn against an imminent disaster in the wake of air raids by the US-led military coalition close to the Euphrates and Tishrin dams.
