A joint operation by the US-led international coalition against the Islamic State group and the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) struck Islamic State fighters in northeastern Syria yesterday, killing five suspected IS members, the SDF said in a statement. The operation led to the death of three civilians, according to a report by Syria’s state-run SANA news agency. The SDF, a Kurdish-majority military alliance, is the official defense force of Rojava, the autonomous region in northeast Syria. The operation took place at dawn in the town of Al-Busayrah, in Syria’s Deir ez-Zor Governorate, about 260 miles northeast of Damascus. “The airdrop was accompanied by intense and indiscriminate shooting on homes and agricultural lands, which caused the martyrdom of three civilians from one family,” the SANA report said. The UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the dead were a schoolteacher and his two sons. SANA also claimed that US forces “kidnapped a number of the locals and took them to an unknown destination.” Joint US-SDF forces reportedly launched similar airborne raids last week in the town of Al Shheell, 4 miles south of Al-Busayrah. The SDF and US-led coalition against the Islamic State also carried out a joint military exercise last week in the countryside of Deir ez-Zor.
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