Apparently, "The U.S. -led coalition fighting the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) accidentally killed 18 fighters from the coalition's main Syrian partner on the ground, the coalition said Thursday".
Coalition aircraft were given the wrong coordinates by partner forces, the predominantly-Kurdish Syrian Democratic Forces, for a strike meant to target ISIS militants south of Tabqa, a town on Lake Assad about 30 miles west of Raqqa, Central Command said.
Due to the improper coordinates, the strike instead hit an SDF site, killing 18. The AP reportes that Central Command indicated that the incident occurred on Tuesday.
The campaign has come at a cost to the predominantly Kurdish forces, which receive ground and air support from the USA military and other allies.
The coalition has offered its "deepest condolences" to the members of the SDF and their families.
Central command says it is reviewing the events that led up to the misdirected strike and implementing changes to prevent another such incident.
"Partnered forces" on the ground in Tabqah had requested this week's air strikes, and, according to U.S. Central Command, "had identified the target location as an ISIS fighting position".
It is not yet clear which air force of the several nations which lend air power to defeating Isis was behind the strike.
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But it is not clear which air force was behind the deadly strike.
Mr Erdogan's office said he and Russian President Vladimir Putin had agreed to back a probe by the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW). "The target location was actually a forward Syrian Democratic Forces fighting position".
Sergey Lavrov said that inspectors from the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons should both visit the Syrian air base, which the USA said had served as a platform for the attack, and the town of Khan Sheikhoun that was hit to get a full and objective picture.
The Syrian Democratic Forces also announced the launch of a fourth phase of their campaign to capture Raqqa, a Euphrates River city that is home to 300,000 people and the de facto capital for ISIS in Syria.
Meanwhile, preparations were underway for the planned evacuation of more than 10,000 residents from two pro-government Shiite villages in northern Syria and the rebel-held towns of Madaya and Zabadani near Damascus.
The SDF says it wants to isolate Raqqa before attacking it. Tabqa is roughly 30 miles west of Raqqa.
Syria strongly denied it was behind the April 4 chemical attack on Khan Sheikhoun, which killed 87 people.
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