Obama Administration Relays “Regret” for “Unintentional Loss of Life” in Airstrike in Syria

The Obama Administration said Saturday it expressed “regret” for an airstrike meant for Islamic State (ISIS) militants that mistakenly killed Syrian forces. The White House is now awaiting a response from the Syrian regime still led by President Bashar al-Assad.

“The United States has relayed our regret through the Russian Federation for the unintentional loss of life of Syrian forces,” the administration official said, confirming it was the first “public” U.S. strike directly on forces loyal to President al-Assad.

The Syrian military called the strike a “serious and blatant attack on Syria and its military” and “firm proof of the U.S. support of Daesh and other terrorist groups.” Daesh is the Arabic acronym for ISIS, whom the military said was able to take a hill overlooking an air base because of the U.S. airstrike.

The U.S. military has suspended its air campaign against the ISIS terror group in eastern Syria, a U.S. Central Command official confirmed. The CENTCOM official also said the U.S. military was “certain” about the outcome of the strike and had been watching al-Assad’s forces “for a few days” believing they were ISIS militants. However, this isn’t the first U.S. airstrike to go wrong recently.

In July, a U.S. air strike in Syria killed more than 85 civilians, including children, but that was as they were fleeing from ISIS. The UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the airstrikes appear to have been a case of mistaken identity, with the U.S.-led coalition misidentifying them as ISIS militants. Nevertheless, the U.S. airstrikes accidentally came down on roughly eight families in the ISIS-controlled village of Tokhar, which is near Manbij in northern Syria. Scores of ISIS fighters are still defending the city and are keeping thousands of civilians from leaving, using them as human shields.

Russian President Vladimir Putin earlier on Saturday called into question the U.S. commitment and ability to the recent cease-fire. He said that the White House wasn’t prepared to break with “terrorist elements” opposing President Assad’s forces.

“This comes from the problems the U.S. is facing on the Syrian track — they still cannot separate the so-called healthy part of the opposition from the half-criminal and terrorist elements,” President Putin said during a trip to Kyrgyzstan.