US air strikes kill 553 in Syria

25 Oct RTE News

Air strikes by the US-led coalition in Syria have killed 553 people since they began a month ago, the vast majority of them militants, a monitoring group said this morning.The strikes have killed 464 Islamic State group fighters, 57 militants from al-Qaeda affiliate al-Nusra Front and 32 civilians, the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

Among the civilians killed were six children and five women, said the observatory, which relies on a wide network of sources inside Syria.

The US-led coalition began air strikes against IS on 23 September, expanding a previous aerial campaign against the group in Iraq, which began in August.

Observatory director Rami Abdel Rahman told the AFP news agency the "vast majority" of militants killed in the strikes were not Syrians but foreign fighters who had joined IS and al-Nusra in the country.