US-led raids kill 23 civilians in Syria

Air strikes by a US-led coalition killed 23 civilians Wednesday in a village held by the Islamic State group in Syria's eastern Deir Ezzor province, a monitor said.

"At least 23 civilians, among them eight children and six women, were killed Wednesday before dawn by air strikes carried out by the US-led coalition, targeting a village controlled by IS on the eastern banks of the Euphrates river," the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

The Observatory, which gathers eye-witness reports from the ground, said the civilians were hiding inside a house and were all members of the same extended family.

US-backed forces are currently battling to capture the last scraps of IS-controlled territory in the area and on Tuesday took a village adjacent to the one that was hit, the monitor said.

Earlier Wednesday a spokesman for the coalition said fighters with its support cleared six kilometres (four miles) of territory along the eastern bank of Euphrates river over the past day.

"ISIS is weak but still a threat -- terrorists lurking in Mid-Euphrates River Valley," spokesman Ryan Dillon wrote on Twitter, using another acronym for IS.

The jihadist group has lost the vast bulk of the territory it captured across Syria and Iraq in 2014 after a string of gruelling offensives.

The Iraqi government and Russia, which backs the forces of Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad, have both declared victory over the jihadists.