Dec 13, 2021: According to Kurdish forces, US-backed Kurdish special forces killed five suspected militants in an airstrike in the eastern Syrian province of Deir az-Zor.

“Today SDF conducted an operation in Deir Ezzor Governorate removing four Daesh fighters from the battlefield & performing a controlled destruction of explosives. This operation furthers the continued efforts to provide safety and security to the region,” the US-led coalition said on Twitter, referring to ISIL by its Arabic acronym Daesh.

The Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), a US-backed coalition of Kurdish and Arab fighters controlling the semi-autonomous Kurdish region of northeastern Syria, said in a statement Monday that the raid took place near the village of Al-Busayra.

The SDF said in a statement that with the support of the US-led coalition, the raid targeted a hideout used by the “armed terrorist group” ISIS. The ISIL group, which seized large swathes of Syria and Iraq in 2014, was disbanded in 2019 as a regional unit with the help of an international military alliance.

The SDF said a gun battle resulted in the deaths of five ISIS members, most of whom were wearing explosive belts.

The Syrian state agency meanwhile said that US troops had fired “indiscriminately” on houses, killing three civilians who were all members of one family.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a war monitor based in the UK which has a wide network of sources across Syria, said at least four people were killed.

Observatory head Rami Abdel Rahman said the dead were members of the same family, including two who were shot by helicopter fire as they tried to flee on a motorbike.

The village of Al-Busaira lies on the banks of the Euphrates, between the two main cities of Deir Az Zor and Mayadeen, in the middle of ISIL’s original heartland.

ISIL has continued to carry out attacks, launching frequent hit-and-run raids from desert hideouts on either side of the border with Iraq.

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