Misdirected U.S. strike killed 18 allied fighters in Syria

Associated Press

BEIRUT — A misdirected airstrike by the U.S.-led coalition earlier this week killed 18 allied fighters battling the Islamic State group in northern Syria, the U.S. military said Thursday.

It was the worst friendlyfire incident of the war against IS, and it deepened questions about targeting methods used in the ongoing American air campaign over Iraq and Syria, which activists allege has resulted in a surge in civilian deaths this year

U.S. Central Command said coalition aircraft were given the wrong coordinates by their partner forces, the predominantly Kurdish Syrian Democratic Forces, for the strike Tuesday that was intended to target IS militants south of their Tabqa stronghold, near the extremists’ de facto capital, Raqqa. The strike hit an SDF position instead. (The strike occurred at night, and the SDF units did not have night-vision gear, according to a U.S. official with knowledge of the accidental strike.)

Several nations have lent their air power to the U.S.led coalition to defeat IS, and it wasn’t clear which air force was behind the errant strike.

The SDF acknowledged the strike, saying a number of its fighters were killed and wounded. On Thursday, the group held funerals for 17 of its fighters in the border town of Tal al-Abyad, the SDFlinked Hawar news agency said, though it did not say whether they were killed in the friendly fire incident.

An activist-run group, Raqqa is Being Slaughtered Silently, said three days of mourning had been declared for the town. The Britainbased Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said 25 SDF fighters were killed in the last two days of battle.

Air missions are challenging in a crowded battlefield, and requests from local forces have played a role in some incidents of civilian casualties. Those include a strike in the Syrian village of Tokhar in July 2016, and another, larger attack last month in the Iraqi city of Mosul.

In both instances, U.S. forces said they used intelligence means to try to verify targets after receiving information from local forces but later acknowledged casualties.

The Mosul strike, which local residents say killed at least 137 people — local reports say more than 200 people were killed — is now under U.S. military investigation.

The Pentagon has struggled in recent weeks to explain why there has been a surge of reported civilian casualties in its air campaign against IS. The SDF, meanwhile, announced the launch of a new phase of its campaign to retake Raqqa.

At the same time, President Bashar Assad said a chemical weapons attack on a rebel-held town in northern Idlib province last week that was widely blamed on his forces was a “fabrication.”