NEW YORK, Nov 15 (APP): The US military covered up a series of airstrikes in 2019 that killed dozens of Syrian civilians during the campaign against supposed Da’esh targets, according to a report in The New York Times.
The strikes in Baghuz, in Syria’s east, targeted a group of women and children huddled by a river, that had been identified as such by Air Force personnel monitoring the area. The report said personnel were shocked by the bombings and it was not immediately clear who had ordered them.
In response to The Times’ inquiries, the US military acknowledged that 80 people were killed and asserted that at least 16 of them were fighters. It said many others may have been combatants, as women and children under Da’esh were sometimes involved in fighting.
The military claimed the strikes were “legitimate self-defence,” proportional and that “appropriate steps were taken to rule out the presence of civilians.”
“We abhor the loss of innocent life and take all possible measures to prevent them. In this case, we self-reported and investigated the strike according to our own evidence and take full responsibility for the unintended loss of life,” U.S. Central Command, which oversaw the operations, said.
An independent investigation into the strike was never conducted, according to The New York Times report which accused the military of a cover-up.
The air strikes occurred on 18 March 2019 in the town of Baghuz in eastern Syria – then the last stronghold of the so-called Da’esh caliphate.
Three bombs were dropped by US jets on a large group of people, despite drone footage showing the presence of civilians, the report said.
Commanders ignored alarm expressed in the immediate aftermath and a subsequent investigation into the incident by the defence department’s inspector general was “stripped” of any mention of the strike, the newspaper reported. It added that no thorough independent investigation had ever happened.
