Bombing Mosque in Syria in Air Strike Dozens Reported 42 Killed over village of al-Jinnah

U.S. Military Denies Reports It Bombed Mosque in Syria

WASHINGTON — The United States military said that it had carried out an airstrike against a meeting of Qaeda militants on Thursday in Syria and that a number of the extremists had been killed.

The American military statement came as Syria activists reported that a mosque had been bombed and that scores of innocent civilians had been killed and wounded.

A spokesman for the United States Central Command said the American aircraft had struck a nearby building, but did not hit the mosque.

“We did not target any mosques,” said Col. John J. Thomas, a spokesman for the Central Command, which has responsibility for American military missions in the Middle East. “What we did target was destroyed. There is a mosque within 50 feet of that building that is still standing.”

But one local activist, Mohamed al Shaghel, said the people who had been struck had “no affiliation with any military faction or any political side.”

“I passed by the hospital,” he said. “I was told that about 50 were killed and 50 wounded. Rescuers are still looking for bodies under the rubble.”

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the airstrike took place in Al Jinah, a village between the cities of Idlib and Aleppo. It said 42 people had been killed, most of them civilians, and described the attack as a “massacre.”

Local activists posted photos on Twitter of what appeared to be the fragments of an American-made Hellfire missile, suggesting that different types of aircraft were used in the attack. It could not be verified where the photo was take or if the fragment came from the attack.

While the American military said it had struck a legitimate target, Colonel Thomas said an investigation would be carried out to determine if innocent civilians had been killed or injured. He declined to say how many militants were estimated to have been killed.

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he 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.

U.S. warplanes struck a mosque compound in northwestern Syria Thursday, killing dozens of people, observer groups and eyewitnesses said today.

http://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/u-s-denies-striking-syrian-mosque-after-dozens-reported-killed-n734696

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he airstrike happened at 7 p.m. local time and was carried out by manned and unmanned aircraft targeting an al-Qaeda meeting, Pentagon spokesman Capt. Jeff Davis said at a press briefing today. He denied that the targeted building was a mosque, but said he had no information on whether the building was affiliated with a mosque.

Ahmad Qawwaf, a resident of al-Jina and an English teacher, said he was having dinner at a friend’s house when he heard the sound of planes and then a loud explosion Thursday evening, about five minutes before the nighttime prayer was set to begin. When he left, he said, he saw that the building for religious lectures affiliated with the mosque was hit.

“I saw ambulances and people covered in dust. And there were four bodies lying in the street,” Qawwaf told ABC News via a messaging app in Arabic. “The bodies were maimed … burns on the faces and the limbs.”

He said he visited the site again today and that rescue workers were still on the scene, trying to pull more people from the rubble. The White Helmets in Aleppo, a volunteer civil defense organization, has released videos of rescues after the airstrike.

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"It was the mosque that was hit," media activist Darwish el-Saleh told ABC News.

He is from a neighboring village and visited the mosque in al-Jina after the attack. "The damage was overwhelming. There was a hole in the ground and bodies were filling the streets," he said, adding that he counted about 30 bodies Thursday.

Eric Pahon, a Pentagon spokesman, described the building as a “partially constructed community meeting hall” that intelligence indicated was a gathering place for al-Qaeda to “educate and indoctrinate al-Qaeda fighters.”

“Initial assessments based upon post-strike analysis do not indicate civilian casualties,” Pahon said. "We take all allegations of civilian casualties seriously and will investigate any credible allegations we receive.”

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“We are certainly not saying that the coalition deliberately targeted the mosque,” Woods told ABC News. “But based on all the evidence we’re seeing from the ground, videos, photographs and White Helmets testimony, the mosque was very heavily damaged last night and a significant number of people died.”

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Since President Trump’s inauguration Jan. 20 through March 15, Airwars tracked 173 separate alleged incidents attributed to the coalition in which more than 1,000 civilians allegedly have died in Iraq and Syria.

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“We’re seeing a fresh rise in civilian casualties,” Woods said. “Alleged and likely civilian deaths were already going up under the last time of Obama, but since Trump has come in we’ve seen a new jump.”

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For the second month in a row, U.S. airstrikes have reportedly killed more civilians than Russian strikes, Airwars’ data for the month of February shows.

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Pentagon DENIES carrying out airstrike on Syrian mosque that killed at least 42 and says it targeted a building 50-feet away where Al Qaeda chiefs were meeting 

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4321686/Air-strike-mosque-near-Aleppo-Syria-kills-42-monitor.html#ixzz4bhCeKmza
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