US fighter jets
© Matthew Bruch / Reuters
The US-led coalition fighting Islamic State in Syria mistakenly killed at least 18 Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) fighters in an airstrike on April 11, the United States Central Command said in a statement.

"A Coalition air strike in support of partnered forces fighting ISIS south of Tabqah, Syria, resulted in 18 Syrian Democratic Forces personnel killed April 11," the statement said.

It added that the strike was "requested by the partnered forces," who identified the target location as "an ISIS fighting position."

"The target location was actually a forward Syrian Democratic Forces fighting position," it added.


The statement said that the Coalition expresses "deepest condolences" to the members of the SDF and their families and will implement appropriate safeguards to prevent similar incidents in the future.

Operation Inherent Resolve is the US military operation against Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL) which includes campaigns in Iraq and Syria. It was launched in summer 2014.

Tabqah is a town in Raqqa province, located some 55km from the city of Raqqa.

Earlier in April, reports emerged in Syrian media saying that at least 15 civilians, including three children and a woman, had been killed in a village near the city of Raqqa, in an alleged airstrike by the US-led coalition.

In March, following the latest round of investigations into Coalition airstrikes, the US Central Command said that warplanes had killed 21 civilians in nine separate strikes in Iraq and Syria, which brings the officially acknowledged civilian death toll from US-led Coalition strikes to 220 since 2014.

In October 2016, a report by Amnesty International said that 11 Coalition attacks "examined by the organization appear to have killed some 300 civilians during two years of strikes targeting the armed group calling itself Islamic State (IS)."

"It's high time the US authorities came clean about the full extent of the civilian damage caused by Coalition attacks in Syria," Lynn Maalouf, deputy director for research at Amnesty International's Beirut regional office, said.