US Airstrike Kills Eight Civilians in Northern Syria

Attack Targeted Munitions Factory, Leveled Homes

A solid year of US airstrikes in Iraq and Syria has led to a significant, but more or less entirely denied, civilian death toll. The most recent incident came Tuesday night, with a US attack on the northern Syrian village of Atmeh, along the Turkey border.

The village is in al-Qaeda-held territory, and had a small munitions factory, which was the intended target of the US airstrikes. Instead, the attack triggered explosions which leveled several civilian homes, killing at least eight civilians and wounding an unknown number of others.

The Pentagon isn’t acknowledging this incident so far, but says that it has received a total of 31 official reports, and dismissed more or less all of them as “not credible.” 17 were dismissed out of hand, and others were rejected after an “investigation” that they never publicly released the results of.

Several hundred civilians are believed to have been killed, though the Pentagon is only confirming two were actually killed in their attacks. The Pentagon did confirm attacking Atmeh that night, but never said what the target was, and would only say they were “looking into” the reports.

Author: Jason Ditz

Jason Ditz is Senior Editor for Antiwar.com. He has 20 years of experience in foreign policy research and his work has appeared in The American Conservative, Responsible Statecraft, Forbes, Toronto Star, Minneapolis Star-Tribune, Providence Journal, Washington Times, and the Detroit Free Press.