While anger toward worldwide and Iraqi forces grows among some Mosul residents, Fatih Abdullah said he does not blame the USA for the death of his brother and his family in February. There’s no question that the jihadists are using civilians as shields, forcing them to stay in homes that are used as firing positions.
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During the Iraq War, which began in 2003, USA troops engaged in extended fighting across the country, battling an insurgency and later sectarian violence to secure areas in key cities and regions. “And there’s also a fair chance that our strike had some role in it”, Townsend said.
But almost 4,000 of the total strikes were undertaken by other members of the coalition battling ISIS.
“The enemy had a hand in this”, he added, stressing that “It sure looks like” the civilians has been forced to gather in the building by the terrorists.
Defending U.S. precautions against civilian deaths, Townsend acknowledged the U.S. conducted multiple airstrikes in the area of the explosions.
Nineveh provincial governor Nawfal Hammadi said that “more than 130 civilians” were killed in strikes over several days in Mosul’s al-Jadida area.
He said the limited resources available for the investigations will be first directed to reviewing the March 17 attack in Mosul because there is active fighting in the area and hence greater risk for future civilian casualties.
Witnesses have said at least 100 bodies were pulled from the rubble of the building in western Mosul, but there is no official death toll.
In report released Tuesday, Amnesty International said the spike in civilian casualties in Mosul suggests the USA -led coalition was not taking adequate precautions to protect civilians. He added that the rules of engagement adopted by Iraqi troops and the coalition had not changed.
The United Nations expressed profound concern over the incident, saying it was “stunned by this awful loss of life”.
“We are stunned by this bad loss of life”, Lise Grande, the humanitarian coordinator for Iraq, said in a statement.
Defense Secretary James Mattis reportedly has been weighing a loosening of restrictions on USA airstrikes that the Obama administration kept in place in war against the Islamic State in Iraq, current and former US officials have said.
The number of victims now ranging from dozens to hundreds has yet to be independently confirmed. Rupert Colville said IS militants are brazenly employing human shields, urging the coalition to “avoid this trap”.
US officials have stressed the airstrike targeted a building where dozens of al Qaeda militants had gathered and did not strike a mosque across the street.
Standing atop a pile of broken concrete and electrical wires, Fatih Abdullah joined a growing list of Mosul residents who have lost relatives to airstrikes believed to be carried out by the global coalition fighting ISIS or Iraqi forces.
He called for an emergency session of the Iraqi parliament to discuss the catastrophe and to begin a parliamentary investigation into its cause.
When the operation to retake Mosul was launched in October, more than a million people were estimated to still be living in the city, Iraq’s second-largest.
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On March 22, an air strike hit a residential building in Rajm Hadid neighborhood. In total, the three strikes have resulted in unconfirmed reports of upwards of 350 civilian casualties. But US officials have not confirmed the senior Iraqi officer’s account.
