AL-UDEID AIR BASE, Qatar (AP) — The U.S.-led coalition fighting the Islamic State group says an airstrike on a mosque in Syria targeted an insurgent command and control center and killed a dozen fighters.

The coalition in a statement says that while the law of war protects mosques, the use of the building as a headquarters by IS caused it to lose that protected status.

Syrian state media and the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said last week that strikes in Sousa near the Iraq border killed and wounded dozens, including civilians and IS fighters.

The coalition says IS deliberately chose the mosque and repeatedly used it to plan and coordinate attacks on U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces. Sousa is in the last IS-held pocket in Syria where those forces have been fighting extremists for weeks.