Led strikes in Iraq, Syria killed 459 civilians

In this photo taken Monday, June 23, 2014, fighters from the Islamic State group parade in a commandeered Iraqi security forces armored vehicle down a main road at the northern city of Mosul, Iraq.

WASHINGTON — The commander of a U.S.-backed Syrian rebel group has been captured by al-Qaida militants near the spot north of Aleppo where a new contingent of U.S.-trained Syrian opposition fighters entered the country earlier this month from Turkey, the group said Thursday.

This picture released on July 13, 2015 by the Rased News Network, a Facebook page affiliated with Islamic State militants, shows Islamic State militants fire weapons during a battle against Syrian government forces, in Deir el-Zour province, Syria.

American intelligence agencies believe that the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) has grown no weaker in the year since the U.S. began its bombing campaign, the Associated Press reports. The coalition retook about 9 percent of Islamic State territory this year, according to the monitoring group IHS, and is continuing to push towards the hub of Raqqa, Syria. Another probe into an airstrike in Syria and two investigations into airstrikes in Iraq are still pending.

That strike is the subject of one of at least four ongoing U.S. military investigations into allegations of civilian casualties resulting from the airstrikes.

In Raqqa, U.S. coalition bombs pound the group’s positions and target its leaders with increasing regularity. The incidents also corresponded to confirmed coalition strikes conducted in the area at that time, it said.

Two movies and a number of other photographs purporting to point out the aftermath of the strikes within the combined Arab and Kurdish village confirmed youngsters allegedly wounded within the airstrikes.

Different Kurdish teams, together with the PKK, and the Individuals’s Safety Models declare Sinjar as a part of their territory.

Syrian Kurdish fighters and their allies have wrested most of the northern Syria border from the Islamic State group, and the plan announced this week for a U.S.-Turkish “safe zone” is expected to cement those gains.

“We’ve seen no meaningful degradation in their numbers”, a defense official said, citing intelligence estimates put the group’s total strength at between 20,000 and 30,000, the same estimate as last August, when the airstrikes began.