Deadliest month for Syria civilians in US-led strikes: Monitor

US-led air strikes on Syria has killed a total of 225 civilians over the past month, a monitor said, the highest 30-day toll since the campaign began in 2014.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the civilian dead between April 23 and May 23 included 44 children and 36 women. The US-led air campaign against the Islamic State jihadist group in Syria began on September 23, 2014. “The past month of operations is the highest civilian toll since the coalition began bombing Syria,” Observatory head Rami Abdel Rahman told media.  The previous deadliest 30-day period was between February 23 and March 23 this year, when 220 civilians were killed, Abdel Rahman said. The past month’s deaths brought the overall civilian toll from the coalition campaign to 1,481, among them 319 children, the Britain-based monitoring group said. Coalition bombing raids between April 23 and May 23 also killed 122 IS jihadists and eight fighters loyal to the Syrian government, the Observatory said. The coalition launched operations against IS in Iraq in August 2014, then expanded them to Syria the following month. It is now backing twin offensives against IS’s last major urban strongholds — Raqa in Syria and Mosul in Iraq.

Violence and conflict in the Middle East and North Africa threaten the lives of over 24 million children, most of them in Yemen, Iraq and Syria, the United Nation’s Children agency said in a report released on Thursday.
From cholera in Yemen to attacks on hospitals in Syria and the tens of thousands of children trapped in Iraq’s city of Mosul, UNICEF said the violence is depriving children of essential health care. Water and sanitation services have been compromised, causing waterborne diseases to spread while health care and nutritious food are insufficient to meet children’s needs, it said.

“Violence is crippling health systems in conflict-affected countries and threatens children’s very survival,” said Geert Cappelaere, UNICEF’s director for the Middle East and North Africa. “Beyond the bombs, bullets and explosions, countless children are dying in silence from diseases that could easily be prevented and treated,” he added.

According to UNICEF, Yemen tops the list, with 9.6 million children in need, followed by Syria, Iraq, Sudan, the Gaza Strip and Libya. Yemen’s two-year conflict has pushed the impoverished country to the brink of famine, with widespread severe acute malnutrition among children. In Syria, 5.8 million children are at risk, including more than 2 million who live under siege and in hard-to-reach areas with little to no humanitarian aid. Many do not have access to life-saving vaccinations and those who fall ill or are injured struggle to get treatment, UNICEF said. In Iraq, water supplies in camps for the displaced around Mosul are stretched to the limit, with new families arriving daily, many with malnourished children, the statement added.

US-backed Iraqi forces are closing in on the last neighborhoods held by the Islamic State group in western Mosul, nearly three years after the extremists overran almost a third of Iraq.