Victims of US-led raids in Mosul still waiting for compensation

It was March 17, 2017. Troops from the US-led coalition fighting jihadists in Iraq were advancing on Mosul’s Old City, squeezing out the Daesh group.

But just months before the recapture of the city, where Daesh had declared its caliphate in 2014, a new human toll was added to the growing tragedy when it was revealed more than 100 civilians had been killed in a single coalition airstrike.

The coalition has now admitted more than 1,000 civilian lives were lost in the seven-year operation against the jihadist group in Iraq and Syria. And for the first time the coalition has revealed that it has compensated the families of 14 victims in Iraq.

Four years after the carnage from which he miraculously escaped alive with his son, Abdullah Khalil is still waiting for compensation. His leg was amputated at the knee and his back is covered in deep welts and burn scars.

But he’s still trying to find out where and how to claim any damages due to him.

In the war against Daesh in Iraq, which the coalition fought mainly from the air, there were no commanders on the ground handing out “blood money” to bereaved families, as has been the case in other Western operations elsewhere.

The compensation system is opaque even for those with expertise, says Sarah Holewinski, Washington director for Human Rights Watch.

“They have sometimes paid, sometimes not. We need degrees to figure out laws and channels,” she said. “I can’t even imagine being an Iraqi woman who has lost her mother trying to figure out not just, do I have any kind of compensation, but how do I get some American to say ‘hey that was actually one of our bombs’.”

It was one of those American bombs that changed the life of former truck driver Khalil on Friday, March 17, 2017, “at 8:10 a.m. exactly” in Mosul Al-Jadidah — New Mosul in Arabic. “There was a bombing and I was buried under rubble”

until “around 11 a.m., when I heard people coming to rescue us,” said the 51-year-old.

The explosion and collapse of the building where he had been sheltering with dozens of women, men and children caused the largest single civilian death toll in the fight against Daesh.

“At least 105 and at most 141 noncombatants” were killed, according to the nongovernmental group Airwars, which monitors civilian deaths in bombings around the world.

For Iraqis, the shock was immense. But it was quickly overwhelmed by the general chaos. In the 72 hours before, during and after that one strike, hundreds more civilians died during fighting in Mosul.

It is often difficult to determine where the strikes originated: in this city of more than 2 million people the jihadists used hundreds of thousands of trapped civilians as human shields. Iraqi troops fired at will, jihadists responded in force and coalition planes shelled the city relentlessly.

Abdullah Khalil, whose leg was amputated and his back is covered in deep welts and burn scars, is still waiting for compensation.