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| US airstrike Syria - U.S. Denies Striking Syrian Mosque; Dozens Reported Killed |
U.S. forces struck an al-Qaeda meeting in the Syrian province of Idlib, killing several suspected terrorists, and are investigating reports that civilians were killed or injured in a nearby mosque, military officials told NBC News on Thursday night.
The officials made the comments after the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a nonpartisan group based in Britain that catalogs military actions in Syria, said at least 42 people were killed in an airstrike on a mosque in the rebel-held village of al-Jinnah southwest of Atareb, which is in the western countryside of the neighboring province of Aleppo. REPORTED BY
The observatory said it wasn't known which side launched the attack. A senior U.S. military official told NBC News that the United States has photographic evidence that a mosque about 50 feet from the target of the U.S. attack was not hit and was still standing.
Few other details were immediately available — including whether the U.S. officials and the human rights observatory were even discussing the same attack.
The conflicting reports come one day after at least 25 people were killed in a suicide bombing at the main court complex in Syria's capital, Damascus, on the sixth anniversary of the start of the uprising against President Bashar al-Assad.
U.N. investigators reported early this month that both sides in Syria's civil war committed repeated war crimes during the battle for Aleppo last year.
The Syrian and Russian militaries have carried out many air strikes in Aleppo and Idlib provinces. The United States has also carried out strikes there in recent months, targeting a rebel group that until last year was an affiliate of al-Qaeda.
NBC News reported Tuesday that the Trump administration is moving ahead with plans to make it easier for the CIA and the military to target terrorists with drone strikes, even if it means tolerating more civilian casualties.
The plan is part of a broad policy shift to grant the CIA and the military more autonomy to target and kill al Qaeda and ISIS militants without presidential authorization in Syria and other countries, U.S. officials said.
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