Airstrike in Syria
Airstrike in SyriaiStock

The US-led coalition which is fighting the Islamic State (ISIS) group in Syria and Iraq on Sunday denied reports that its air strikes in a part of eastern Syria held by the jihadist group killed dozens of civilians.

On Saturday, the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said that coalition air strikes killed 43 people, mostly civilians, in the Abu Husn village of the Deir Ezzor province near the Iraqi border.

The coalition said in response it struck only “legitimate” militant targets, and that another 10 airstrikes in the area were not carried out by US-led forces.

The US-led coalition has been backing a Kurdish-Arab alliance called the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) fighting to expel the jihadists from the pocket around Abu Husn.

ISIS overran large swathes of Syria and neighboring Iraq in 2014, proclaiming a "caliphate" in land it controlled.

Since then, several military offensives, including those backed by the US-led coalition, have since seen ISIS lose most areas it once controlled, including the loss of their de facto capital Raqqa in Syria..

The coalition has since 2014 acknowledged direct responsibility for over 1,100 civilian deaths in Syria and Iraq.

In September of 2016, the Pentagon apologized after the US-led coalition struck Syrian military positions inside the country.