Pentagon officials on Thursday said at least 105 civilians died in a strike targeting Islamic State fighters in the Iraqi city of Mosul in March, but blamed the high toll on an unexpected secondary blast.
A US aircraft delivered a single precision-guided bomb into a building in west Mosul on March 17, with the aim of killing a pair of snipers on the second story of the structure in the al-Jadida neighborhood, which at the time was under IS control.
But the bomb also caused a large cache of IS explosives to detonate, leading to the catastrophic collapse of the building that had civilians sheltering downstairs, the officials said.
“The secondary explosion triggered a rapid failure of the structure which killed the two ISIS snipers, 101 civilians sheltered in the bottom floors of the structure and four civilians in the neighboring structure to the west,” US Air Force Brigadier General Matt Isler said.
It was the single deadliest incident for civilians stemming from a coalition strike since anti-IS operations in Iraq and Syria nearly three years ago.
Isler said another 36 civilians who are “believed to be connected” to the building remained unaccounted for, but they had likely fled the area shortly before the strike.
He said he was “very confident” in the final toll.
The United States had previously only acknowledged that it “probably” had a role in the civilian deaths.
“Our condolences go out to all those that were affected,” said Major General Joe Martin.
“The coalition takes every feasible measure to protect civilians from harm. The best way to protect civilians is to defeat ISIS.”
No condolence payments have been made, Isler said, though such a move has not been ruled out.
According to Isler, Iraqi counterterrorism service (CTS) troops had been moving into the al-Jadida neighborhood in west Mosul when they came under fire from the IS snipers.
CTS and coalition forces did not know civilians were in the building, Isler said, and ultimately called in a strike.
The precision-guided bomb selected — a GBU-38 — was set up to cause only localized damage to the building, but it ignited a large amount of explosive material which, unbeknownst to the coalition, IS fighters had previously placed inside.
“Post-blast analysis detected residues common to explosives used by ISIS, but not consistent with the explosive content of a GBU-38 munition,” Central Command said in a statement.
“Engineering and weapons analysis indicates that the GBU-38 should have resulted in no more than 16-20 percent damage to the structure, localized to the front of the second floor.”
The investigation comes amid broader claims that US forces under President Donald Trump are killing more civilians as the military fulfils a plan to “annihilate” IS.
But the Pentagon says its rules of engagement remain unchanged and insists its precision-targeting abilities are the best in the world.
Officials say the US takes every measure to avoid hitting civilians, including by aborting missile strikes at the last moment if a civilian unexpectedly wanders into the target zone.
As of the most recent Centcom official count at the end of April, a total of 396 civilians had been killed since the beginning of the bombing campaign against the Islamic State group in Iraq and Syria nearly three years ago.
The 105 figure from the March incident would push that number beyond 500.
Airwars, a London-based collective of journalists and researchers that tracks civilian deaths in Iraq and Syria, claims a minimum of 3,350 people have been killed in coalition strikes.
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