Over 650 Syrian civilians killed in US-led airstrikes in 40 months: SOHR

A monitoring group says more than 600 children have lost their lives ever since the US-led coalition purportedly fighting the Daesh Takfiri terrorist group started its aerial assaults against residential areas across Syria back in September 2014.

The so-called Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) reported that 2,815 people, including 655 minors and 481 women, were killed in US-led aerial attacks against civilian areas in the conflict-plagued Arab country over the past 40 months.

The London-based watchdog said the aerial assaults were conducted in the provinces of Hasakah, Raqqah, Aleppo, Idlib and Dayr al-Zawr, noting that the remains of 19 victims still await identification.

It added that the US-led coalition continues to carry out airstrikes across Syria despite the fact that the militants are controlling only pockets of Syrian territories following their humiliating defeats in the northern and eastern parts of the country.

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.

Last month, Syria’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Expatriates, in two separate letters addressed to United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres and the former rotating president of the UN Security Council, Koro Bessho, stated that the US-led coalition has been pretending to fight Daesh, but it has, in fact, been transporting the terrorists from one part of Syria to another and securing them.

The letters further noted that Daesh terrorists have been purged from most regions in Syria only through counter-terrorism operations conducted by government troops and allied fighters from popular defense groups.

They also criticized the so-called advocates of human rights and rule of law for turning a blind eye to the atrocities the US-led coalition is perpetrating in Raqqah and Dayr al-Zawr provinces.