Beirut // Strikes by a US-led coalition against ISIL killed at least 15 civilians, including three children, in northeastern Syria on Thursday, a monitor said.
The strikes hit four ISIL-controlled villages in Hassakeh province, the Syrian observatory for human rights said, saying the toll could rise.
It said nine ISIL fighters had also been killed in the strikes.
US-led air strikes had also killed several civilians in Hassakeh earlier this week, said the Britain-based monitor.
Eight civilians, including one woman, were killed in an ISIL-controlled village on Wednesday while 15 civilians were killed in the town of Al-Shadadi on Tuesday, the group said.
That brought the number of civilians reported killed in US-led strikes in Hasakeh to 38 since Tuesday.
Strikes elsewhere in the province also killed 26 ISIL fighters on Wednesday, it said.
The coalition has reportedly stepped up its raids in Hassakeh since the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces alliance launched a new operation against ISIL in the southern part of the province on Tuesday.
The alliance has scored successes against ISIL in other parts of the province in the past, backed by the coalition which began strikes in Syria in September 2014.
It has rarely acknowledged civilian deaths in its campaign against ISIL although it admitted in January that there were two “likely” civilian deaths last year near the ISIL stronghold of Raqqa, bringing to 16 the total number of civilians the coalition has acknowledged killing in both Syria and neighbouring Iraq.
The Observatory said last month that the coalition campaign had killed some 332 civilians in Syria since it began, among them 90 children.
In total, the campaign has killed more than 4,250 people in Syria, according to the monitor, which relies on a network of sources on the ground.
* Agence France-Presse