US reviews bombing videos from Mosul
IRAQ: The US military is reviewing more than 700 videos of bombs it dropped on the Iraqi city of Mosul after hundreds of civilians died in US-led airstrikes in the campaign to retake the city from Islamic State.
Local reports say that as many as 200 civilians, including women and children, were killed in a March 17 airstrike that struck buildings in which they were hiding during street-to-street battles.
‘‘We are not jumping to any conclusions,’’ Colonel John Thomas, a spokesman for US Central Command, said yesterday. ‘‘We are looking at getting ground truth. It’s our highest priority.’’
The videos span 10 days. Central Command said the assessment would be the top priority for investigators for two to three weeks. If there is sufficient evidence, a formal investigation will begin.
‘‘We know that we were dropping bombs in the immediate vicinity, if not on specific buildings that have made it into the (reports),’’ Thomas said. ‘‘Our weapons are quite precise ... so we have to look at what we actually struck.’’
Iraqi Vice President Osama Nujaifi has called for an immediate investigation into the Mosul airstrikes, which he called a ‘‘humanitarian disaster.’’ The United Nations said last week that it was ‘‘profoundly concerned’’ about the reported civilian deaths in Mosul.
Mosul, Islamic State’s stronghold in northern Iraq, is the country’s second-largest city and has been under the group’s control since 2014.
Word of the investigation came as the Pentagon announced that it was sending more US troops from the Army’s82nd Airborne Division to Mosul to assist Iraqi forces as the battle intensifies.
Pentagon officials would not say how many additional troops were being deployed, saying only that an ‘‘unspecified number’’ were being sent from the division’s 2nd Brigade Combat Team, based at Fort Bragg, N.C. They will join 1700 troops from the same team who were deployed in November for nine months to support the anti-Islamic State campaign.
Fighting in Mosul has intensified as the battle has moved into more densely populated areas in the city’s west, where Islamic State militants are using homes for cover.
More than 200,000 civilians have fled the city since the offensive began in October, according to the Switzerland-based International Organisation for Migration. Thousands more are trapped in the fighting.
Thomas said the military was examining ‘‘intriguing information of secondary explosions,’’ a possible indication that a large number of civilian casualties caused by something other than a US airstrike: possible Islamic State booby traps, perhaps the explosion of an Islamic State truck bomb after it was hit by a US-launched munitions, or possibly buildings collapsing because of the blasts.
The Iraqi military denied on Monday that US airstrikes had caused the civilian casualties, saying in a statement that military experts at the scene had found no signs of an air attack. Instead, they found that the walls of the houses where families had been hiding were booby-trapped. The Iraqi military said a detonator had been found nearby.
The Iraqis said 61 bodies were pulled from the rubble and that 25 women and children were rescued.
The US military currently does not have access to the affected location but expects to be able to arrive there once fighting subsides, Thomas said.
‘‘We are looking to get folks on the ground combined with the Iraqi reports to help us understand the situation,’’ he said.
The Pentagon is also moving toward opening an official investigation into a March 17 airstrike that it says targeted al-Qaeda militants in northern Syria. Local reports allege that the airstrike struck a crowded mosque during evening prayers, killing dozens of civilians.
The US-led coalition fighting Islamic State in Iraq and Syria has killed 220 civilians since operations began in 2014, according to the latest estimate from the Defence Department, released this month.
Monitoring groups say the number is much higher. Airwars, an independent Britain-based group, says that at least 2462 civilians have been killed in the attacks. - TNS