Pentagon denies striking mosque in Syria, says it killed al Qaeda militants

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Pentagon on Friday denied accusations by a Syrian rebel group that the United States had targeted a mosque in Syria and, in a rare move, showed an aerial image to illustrate the mosque was intact and the building destroyed was in fact across the street.

Pentagon spokesman Captain Jeff Davis, addressing a Pentagon news conference, said he believed dozens of al Qaeda fighters were killed in the Thursday strike by manned and unmanned U.S. aircraft on an al Qaeda meeting place in the village of al-Jina, Aleppo.

Davis said the U.S. military had not yet seen any credible allegations of civilian casualties, including on social media.

The Pentagon released to the public the image it showed to reporters: a black and white aerial image showing the mosque still standing across the street from a building that had been reduced to rubble by the strike.

But the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based war monitoring group, said both buildings together make up the mosque.

The air strikes hit the mosque complex, which consists of a center belonging to an Islamist organization and a nearby prayer area, destroying the religious center, it said.

The Observatory said the strikes had killed at least 49 people and wounded dozens, mostly civilians who were attending a prayer and religious lesson at the center.

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