Children among 28 killed in US air strike 

The US is thought to have killed dozens of civilians in a fresh air strike yesterday, a day after opening an investigation into the deadliest air raids during its two-year campaign in the Syrian war.

Calls have been growing among the opposition for the US-led coalition to temporarily stop its bombing of Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isil) to avoid further unintended casualties.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said early yesterday that at least 28 people, including seven children, died in air strikes on the village of al-Ghandour in the countryside north of Manbij city.

Pictures from the area posted on social media showed the bodies of two children who appeared under 10 years old.

“They were killed when the warplanes of the international coalition committed a massacre in the town of al-Ghandour in the northwestern countryside of Manbij city east of Aleppo province, where the warplanes targeted areas in the town of al-Ghandour,” the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

On Wednesday, the US military announced that it would formally investigate an air strike on July 19, in the nearby village of Tokkhar, which left at least 56 civilians dead.

The main Syrian opposition group had urged the US-led coalition to suspend its bombardments. Anas al-Abdah, president of the Syrian National Coalition, warned in a letter to the foreign ministers of the anti- Isil coalition that the killings of civilians would “prove to be a recruitment tool for terrorist organisations.”