Scores of civilians killed in Turkey airstrikes in Syria
ERBIL, Kurdistan Region (Kurdistan24) - Turkish airstrikes on the Islamic State (IS)-held town of al-Bab in northern Syria has killed at least 88 civilians in the past 24 hours, said a monitoring group on Friday.
Of those, 24 were children.
The London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) which monitors the internationalized civil war in the country through local contacts put the total number of civilians killed by Turkish bombardments in the past four months at 246.
Reports of civilian deaths followed the Wednesday killing of 16 Turkish troops in clashes and an IS car bomb attack near al-Bab, as well as the release of a video by the group purportedly showing the burning to death of two other captive soldiers.
Turkey launched an incursion dubbed Operation Euphrates Shield in late August with the dual aim of driving the IS from its southern border and preventing the US-supported Kurdish People's Protection Units from linking the canton of Afrin with Kobani in the same area.
Al-Bab, some 35 kilometers (21 miles) south of the Turkish border, has for weeks now been the target of Turkey and the Free Syrian Army (FSA) units which hope to reclaim the town before the Kurds do so.
The IS-affiliated Aamaq news agency published a graphic video and pictures showing people pulling dead kids from under houses in rubble which it said was the result of Turkish airstrikes on several houses.
With its warplanes operating daily in Syria, Turkey does not specify the number of airstrikes conducted against perceived IS targets.
The government-run Anadolu Agency said on Friday that an airstrike overnight in al-Bab killed 18 "high level" IS militants.
Turkish General Staff denied the killing of civilians saying they have received no such account from relatives or families.
In a statement to BBC's Turkish language service, the army's media department accused SOHR of "constantly producing lies."
Previously, Turkish airstrikes and artillery shelling killed 24 civilians, six of them children, in the village of Suraysat, south of Jarablus nearby, according to a mid-September Human Rights Watch (HRW) report.
Editing by Ava Homa