Nearly 3,000 Syrian civilians killed in US-led airstrikes in 38 months: Group

A monitoring group says nearly 3,000 civilians have lost their lives in more than three years as the US-led coalition purportedly fighting the Daesh Takfiri terrorist group continues its aerial assaults against residential areas across Syria.

The so-called Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) reported on Thursday that 2,759 civilians, including 644 minors and 470 women, had been killed in US-led aerial attacks against civilian areas in the war-devastated Arab country over the past 38 months.

The Britain-based monitoring group added that the US-led air raids had claimed the lives of 98 people, including four children and as many women, between October 23 and November 23 this year.

The SOHR went on to say that the civilian fatalities had been mostly recorded in the northern provinces of Hasakah, Raqqah, Aleppo and Idlib in addition to the eastern province of Dayr al-Zawr.

On October 11, Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Muallem said the US-led coalition was trying to destroy the Arab country and prolong the armed conflict there.

Muallem stated that Damascus would demand the dissolution of the military contingent, stressing that thousands of Syrian women and children had been killed by coalition airstrikes in Raqqah and Dayr al-Zawr.

The US-led coalition has been conducting airstrikes against what are said to be Daesh targets inside Syria since September 2014 without any authorization from the Damascus government or a UN 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.

On November 12, Syria’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Expatriates criticized the so-called human rights advocates for turning a blind eye to the atrocities the US-led coalition is perpetrating in Raqqah and Dayr al-Zawr.

It also called on the United Nations Security Council to “shoulder its main responsibility of preserving international peace and security and take immediate action to stop the brutal crimes committed by the illegal coalition against the innocent civilians and prevent more crimes from happening.”