At least 40 people have been killed in deadly U.S. airstrikes on Raqqa city, local activists said on Monday as more than 40,000 people still trapped by aerial and ground bombing.
Raqqa-based activist Ahmed Shalabi said the U.S.-led airstrikes, in support of Kurdish-led forces, have destroyed large parts of al-Bado neighborhood, killing at least 40 civilians. The death toll is expected to rise as many people still under rubble.
The coalition warplanes conducted more than 50 raids, Shalabi added.
The Syrian Democratic Forces said fierce clashes are still underway in al-Rashid and al-Mansour neighborhoods with ISIS.
The death toll of Coalition aerial campaign in support for its allied Kurdish force has reached a total of 1000 in the last four months amid deliberate blackout for daily death.
At least 21 worshipers were killed on Saturday when U.S. airstrikes struck a mosque at the Syrian-Iraqi border, local activists said.
The U.S. strikes hit the ISIS-held village of al-Jazza’ In the southern countryside of Hasaka city, two days since similar strikes killed 15 family members near the area, according to activists.
This week and in a provocative statement, the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces spokesman told Reuters that the U.S. military will remain in northern Syria long after the jihadists are defeated, predicting enduring ties with the Kurdish-dominated region.
The SDF, an alliance of militias dominated by the Kurdish YPG, believes the United States has a "strategic interest" in staying on, SDF spokesman Talal Silo told Reuters.
"They have a strategy policy for decades to come. There will be military, economic and political agreements in the long term between the leadership of the northern areas (of Syria) ... and the U.S. administration," Silo said.
