Syrian Opposition Urges US to Suspend Airstrikes After Deadly Manbij Attack

The Syrian National Coalition has called on the US to immediately suspend all anti-Daesh airstrikes following a spate of failed airstrikes by the NATO coalition that have left over 140 civilians dead. The first airstrike, conducted by the United States in Manbij occurred on Monday and led to the deaths of at least 20 civilians. On Tuesday, French warplanes killed more than 120 civilians near the Turkish-Syrian border in the village of Toukhan Al-Kubra.

On Wednesday, the Syrian Foreign Ministry sent letters to the UN secretary general and to the president of the UN Security Council, which at present is Japan, demanding immediate action be taken against the NATO mission in Syria. 

Damascus called on the UN to look into the atrocities committed by France and the United States in both Toukhan Al-Kubra and Manbij as part of the US-led international coalition.

​​"The French unjust aggression claimed the lives of more than 120 civilians, most of them are children, women and elderly, in additions to the tens of wounded citizens, the majority of them are also children and women as reports say that the fate of scores of other civilians who are still under debris is unknown, too," the Syrian Foreign Ministry wrote in regards to the attack in Toukhan Al-Kubra reports the Syrian Arab News Agency.

The Syrian Foreign Ministry also took the United States to task continuing in their statement that "The government of the Syrian Arab Republic condemns, with the strongest possible terms, the two bloody massacres perpetrated by the French and US warplanes and those affiliated to the so-called international coalition which send their missiles and bombs to the civilians instead of directing them to the terrorist gangs."