According to reports from Iraqi media outlets, U.S. coalition forces on Monday killed up to 22 civilians in a bombing on the town of Hit, which is located in Anbar Province.
The strikes hit a market, leaving four children among the dead, and wounding 43 others, the National Iraqi News Agency reported Monday. U.S. coalition war planes also bombed an "apartment building inhabited with families," according to the report, and a "security source" told the Agency that hundreds of families have been displaced from Hit, due to escalating bombings.
The LA Times, which covered the reported civilian deaths, said Maj. Curtis J. Kellogg, a spokesman for the U.S. Central Command, claimed there was "no evidence" of the killings and accused such claims of being "false." However, Kellogg offered no evidence to back up this claim.
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The U.S. military has been quick to deny the numerous other reports of civilian deaths in both Syria and Iraq, again offering no evidence. Furthermore, Caitlin Hayden, a spokesperson for the National Security Council, revealed last week that the Obama administration is loosening its standards for preventing civilian deaths in the ongoing bombings of Iraq and Syria.
According to U.S. Central Command, since August 8 the U.S. has launched at least 340 air strikes in Iraq and Syria, nearly three quarters of them in Iraq. The Pentagon continues to provide few details about the aircraft used to launch the bombings or about those killed and wounded in the strikes.
Meanwhile, the Guardian reported Tuesday that the United States has accepted "staggeringly few" of the over three million Syrian refugees who have fled the country since the war began in early 2011. According to journalists Lauren Gambino and Raya Jalabi, the U.S. only accepted 36 Syrian refugees in 2013.
