Monitor says strike by U.S-led forces kills 17 civilians in Syria

BEIRUT (Reuters) - An air strike by U.S.-led forces on the northern Syrian province of Aleppo on Friday killed at least 17 civilians including two children, and wounded dozens more, a group monitoring the Syrian conflict said. U.S. and Arab forces have been carrying out almost daily air raids against hardline jihadist groups in Syria, such as Islamic State, since last September and U.S.-led forces are also targeting the group in Iraq. Rami Abdulrahman, who runs the British-based Observatory for Human Rights, said it appeared that the air raid had mistakenly struck civilians in a village on the eastern banks of the Euphrates River in Aleppo instead of militant targets. Condemning the strike, he said there were entire families among the dead and wounded. The Observatory, which collects information from a network of sources on the ground, said in April that the U.S.-led strikes had killed at least 66 civilians in Syria since they started on September 23. The campaign had killed nearly 2,000 Islamic State fighters, it said. The United States has previously said it takes reports of civilian casualties from the U.S.-led strikes seriously and says it has a process to investigate each allegation. (Reporting by Sylvia Westall; Editing by Angus MacSwan)