\n Defense Secretary Ashton Carter on Wednesday pledged openness on allied accountability a day after dozens of civilians were killed in raids near an IS-held town in Syria.\n<\/p>\n
\n The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said Tuesday that children were among at least 56 civilians killed in strikes by the coalition as they fled Al-Tukhar in Aleppo province, near the key Islamic State group stronghold of Manbij.\n<\/p>\n
\n \"We will conduct an investigation on any possible civilian casualties in this matter, as we always do, and we'll be transparent about that,\" Carter told a briefing at this air base outside Washington.\n<\/p>\n
\n General Joe Votel, head of Centcom said allies would \" continue to do all we can to protect civilians from harm,\" at the same news conference.\n<\/p>\n
\n \"It is an extraordinarily dynamic situation up around Manbij right now, as we talked about a little bit earlier.\"\n<\/p>\n
\n The Syrian Democratic Forces, an alliance off militias, has been fighting since May 31 to retake Minbej.\n<\/p>\n
\n \"So it's a very difficult fight. ISIL is trying to hold onto that area, so we do see them showing up at a variety of different locations,\" Votel said.\n<\/p>\n
\n \"And so when it's a dynamic situation like that... we have to respond. And I think that's the situation in which we found this particular\" operation.\n<\/p>\n
\n Rights groups say war crimes have been committed by all sides in Syria's conflict, which began in March 2011 and has killed more than 280,000 people.\n<\/p>\n
\n The government is accused of widespread torture, as well as indiscriminate fire on civilian populations.\n<\/p>\n
\n And the Islamic State jihadist group has regularly carried out gruesome executions of its opponents.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Defense Secretary Ashton Carter on Wednesday pledged openness on allied accountability a day after dozens of civilians were killed in raids near an IS-held town in Syria. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said Tuesday that children were among at least 56 civilians killed in strikes by the coalition as they fled Al-Tukhar in Aleppo […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":60,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[553],"tags":[],"ji_location":[],"class_list":["post-28535","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-live-feed"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n