Horror out of blue
BAGHDAD — Investigations conducted during March reveal that U.S.-led coalition air strikes targeting ISIS in Iraq and Syria killed 45 civilians, mostly in and around the Iraqi city of Mosul, according to a Pentagon statement released Sunday.
Meanwhile, the Pentagon also identified a 25-year-old Georgia native as the Army paratrooper killed in a blast outside Mosul.
Weston Lee, a 1st lieutenant based at Fort Bragg, N.C., died after an improvised explosive device detonated while he was patrolling outside the besieged city on Saturday, officials said. Lee was posthumously awarded the Bronze Star Medal, Purple Heart and Meritorious Service Medal.
In the deadly air strikes, the Pentagon said, “all feasible precautions were taken,” but the strikes still resulted in “unintentional” loss of civilian life.
The report did not include findings from an ongoing investigation into a March 17 strike targeting Islamic State fighters in Mosul. That strike resulted in more than 100 civilian deaths, according to reports from residents.
Last month, the U.S. acknowledged coalition planes conducted a strike “at the location corresponding to allegations of civilian casualties,” but did not confirm the reports of high civilian casualties. Coalition officials have declined to give a time frame as to when the investigation into the incident will be complete.
The Pentagon acknowledged at least 352 civilians have been killed by coalition strikes in Iraq and Syria since the start of the air campaign against ISIS in 2014. Activists and monitoring groups put the number much higher. The London-based monitoring group Airwars reported that coalition strikes have killed more than 3,000 civilians in Iraq and Syria since 2014.
The March 17 strike sparked outrage in Iraq and beyond with calls from local officials as well as the UN for greater restraint. The UN reported nearly 2,000 civilians have been treated for trauma since the fight for western Mosul began in February following the formal launch of the operation to retake Mosul in October 2016.
Iraqi forces declared Mosul’s eastern half “fully liberated” in January, but have since struggled to retake the western side. Claustrophobic terrain and tens of thousands of civilians being held by the extremists as human shields have bogged Iraqi and coalition forces down.
The Sunday statement also included the findings of an audit begun in March that inspected the way the U.S.-led coalition reports and tracks civilian casualties in the fight against ISIS.
The statement said the audit found that 80 civilian deaths caused by coalition air strikes had not been previously publicly reported and two civilian deaths previously reported were found to have not been caused by the coalition.