On Friday, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported that US airstrikes against the town of Souseh killed at least 32 civilians, many of them women and children. There were also reports of US strikes along the Iraqi side of the nearby border.

Syria’s Foreign Ministry reported 62 civilians killed in the strikes, though the US is now disputing this, claiming that not only were no civilians killed and none were targeted, but that the US airstrikes were “valid.”

The official Pentagon claim is that ISIS had used the moque as a “headquarters” and the mosque was a “valid military target.” They said they would look into all “credible allegations of civilian casualties.”

Of course, that usually means dismissing the large civilian death tolls as “non-credible,” so as to not investigate them at all. It is thought this that the US ends up with official civilian tolls only a fraction of those from NGOs.