Blast near Syria US-led coalition patrol causes casualties

BEIRUT (AP) — An explosion struck Wednesday near a patrol of the U.S.-led coalition in the northern Syrian town of Manbij, killing and wounding more than a dozen people, a Syrian war monitoring group and a local town council said.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said seven civilians were killed and nine wounded in the blast. There was no immediate comment from the U.S.-led coalition or the U.S. military on the explosion or casualties among coalition forces.

The Kurdish Hawar news agency, based in northern Syria, and the Observatory, which monitors the war through activists on the ground, reported U.S. troops were among the casualties.