The airstrike was carried out south of Tabqa, a focus area for the coalition as it closes in on the ISIS heartland of Raqqa. Coalition air power has been called in by the SDF on previous occasions during this battle.
The Pentagon said on Thursday that a US-led air strike mistakenly killed 18 SDF members south of Tabqa.
The London-based monitoring group Airwars, which works with the coalition to track airstrike casualties, has found 37 reported friendly-fire strikes in Iraq and Syria since 2014. In June 2016, the Pentagon confirmed that the United States had conducted a series of airstrikes in and around the city of Ma'ra in May, one of which killed four fighters from an allied Sunni Muslim militant group, the Mutasim Brigade, which Washington had trained.
Several nations have lent their air power to the US -led coalition to defeat the Islamic State group, and it wasn't clear which air force was behind the errant strike.
American military officials said that innocent civilian deaths and friendly fire tragedies "is to be expected as Iraqi forces try to retake Mosul".
The Coalition is assessing the cause of the incident and will implement appropriate safeguards to prevent similar incidents in the future.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said he expected the OPCW to conduct an extensive probe into the attack, and insisted the organization visit both Khan Sheikhoun and the air base struck by USA missiles. "It will never happen", he said.
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A U.S. Air Force F-15E Strike Eagle fighter aircraft roars off into the sky over Afghanistan Oct. 6. "We demand that the United States should respect the sovereignty of a state and avoid such actions that threaten the current world order", he said.
That strike is also under investigation.
On late Wednesday, Russia vetoed a United Nations (UN) resolution demanding the Syrian government cooperate with an investigation into the suspected chemical attack, saying that Moscow had consistently expressed its "categorical disagreement" with the draft resolution, which led to further criticism from the West, including the United States.
The Pentagon on Thursday admitted to accidentally killing 18 US -backed Syrian fighters on Tuesday during a coalition operation against the Islamic State (ISIS).
The head of Iraqi civil forces working at the Mosul site told CNN that 141 bodies have been recovered.
Such friendly fire accidents are inevitable in proxy wars, similar to the one the USA is waging in Syria against Islamic State, Martin Jay, journalist and Middle East expert, told RT, commenting on the incident.
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