Coalition missile strikes have killed 42 people including 13 civilians in what remains of the Islamic State group's last holdout in eastern Syria, a war monitor said.

The Syrian Democratic Forces, with backing from a US-led coalition, are battling to expel the last jihadists from hamlets in the eastern province of Deir Ezzor.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said short-range missiles late Friday hit homes on farmland near the village of Baghouz, killing 42 people.

Among them were 13 civilians, the Britain-based monitor said.

They included seven Syrians linked to IS including three children from the same family, as well as six Iraqi non-combatants, it said.

The coalition was not immediately available for comment, but has in the past said it does everything to avoid targeting civilians.

"The area is a launchpad for jihadist counterattacks," Observatory chief Rami Abdel Rahman said.

The SDF have since September been battling to expel IS from their last pocket of territory on the eastern banks of the Euphrates River in Deir Ezzor.

The SDF has advanced swiftly in recent weeks, taking control of a series of key villages, with IS scrambling to retaliate.

On Thursday, IS failed to retake Baghouz from the SDF in one counterattack that left a total of 50 fighters dead on both sides, the Observatory said.

Thousands of people, mostly women and children, have fled into SDF-held territory in recent days, according to the Britain based Observatory, which relies on a network of contacts inside Syria for its information.

IS overran large swathes of Syria and neighbouring Iraq in 2014, declaring a "caliphate", but it has since lost almost all of its territory to various offensives.

But it maintains a presence in Syria's vast Badia desert.

Syria's civil war has killed 360,000 people and displaced millions since it started in 2011 with the brutal repression of anti-government protests.

Related Links
Space War News

Tweet

Thanks for being here; We need your help. The SpaceDaily news network continues to grow but revenues have never been harder to maintain. With the rise of Ad Blockers, and Facebook - our traditional revenue sources via quality network advertising continues to decline. And unlike so many other news sites, we don't have a paywall - with those annoying usernames and passwords. Our news coverage takes time and effort to publish 365 days a year. If you find our news sites informative and useful then please consider becoming a regular supporter or for now make a one off contribution.
SpaceDaily Contributor $5 Billed Once credit card or paypal		SpaceDaily Monthly Supporter $5 Billed Monthly paypal only

Understanding Warfighter Performance from the Inside Out
Washington DC (SPX) Jan 23, 2019
A new program out of DARPA's Biological Technologies Office could help the Department of Defense enhance and sustain military readiness both by revolutionizing how troops train, perform, and recover, and by mitigating shortages of highly qualified candidates for extremely specialized roles. The anticipated outputs of the Measuring Biological Aptitude (MBA) program are a set of biomarkers - measurable indicators of biological processes - that correspond to traits of highly effective performance in ... read more