Amnesty says Iraq, allies violated international law in Mosul battle

Amnesty International said on Tuesday it had identified a pattern of attacks by Iraqi forces and the US-led military coalition backing them in the battle for Mosul that violated international humanitarian law and may amount to war crimes.

The rights group said in a report that the Islamic State militant group had flagrantly violated that same law by deliberately putting civilians in harm’s way to shield their fighters and impede the advance of Iraqi and coalition forces.

A 100,000-strong alliance of Iraqi government units, Kurdish peshmerga fighters and Shia militias had launched the offensive in October, with key air and ground support from the international coalition.

Much of Mosul has been destroyed in grinding street-tostreet fighting, thousands of civilians have been killed and nearly a million people fled their homes, according to the United Nations.

Amnesty said Iraqi forces and the coalition carried out a series of unlawful attacks in west Mosul since January, relying heavily on Improvised Rocket Assisted Munitions (IRAMs), explosive weapons with crude targeting capabilities that wreaked havoc in densely populated areas.

“Even in attacks that seem to have struck their intended military target, the use of unsuitable weapons or failure to take other necessary precautions resulted in needless loss of civilian lives and in some cases appears to have constituted disproportionate attacks,” the report said.

Neither the Iraqi defence ministry nor coalition officials were immediately available to comment on the Amnesty report.