The general in charge of the fight against the Islamic State told reporters on Tuesday that “there’s a fair chance” the U.S. is at least partly responsible for civilian casualties in Mosul.
“I’ll say this if we did it, and I would say there is a fair chance that we did, it was an unintentional accident of war and we will transparently report it to you when we are ready,” Lt. Gen. Stephen Townsend, commander of Operation Inherent Resolve, told reporters.
“My initial assessment is that we probably had a role in these casualties. What we don’t know is whether they were gathered there by the enemy, and it looks like they were,” he said.
Reports on the ground estimate that 100 to 200 civilians died on March 17 in the vicinity of coalition airstrikes in western Mosul, where Islamic State militants are fighting Iraqi Security Forces.
The death of the civilians, Townsend said, could be the result of an airstrike collapsing a building, or the Islamic State could have rigged the building with explosives. Or a strike on a nearby truck could have set off a secondary explosion. Or it could be a combination of the three, Townsend said, as the investigation is ongoing.
“My initial impression is that the enemy had a hand in this, and we played a role in it,” Townsend said. “The munition that was used should not have collapsed an entire building, that’s something we have to figure out.
“Right now there are a lot of conflicting reports as to what brought down the building or buildings that caused civilian casualties. What we know for sure is that we did conduct a strike in that area. What we don’t know for certain is if that strike was responsible for the casualties in question. There are also reports that ISIS may have trapped civilians in the house and rigged it to blow up. There is a report that a secondary [car bomb] may have been the cause that destroyed the house. Also I would point out these are not mutually exclusive. It could have been a combination of events that caused this tragedy, and that’s why we are hesitant to say anything definitive until our proper process is completed.”
Townsend said the Islamic State has rigged buildings to explode before. In one instance, members had trapped 45 people in one house and 25 in another and rigged the buildings to explode. However, Iraqi Security Forces were able to defuse the bombs and get the people out. He added that he was making the comments due to the intense media attention on the incident, and he felt a responsibility to discuss the matter with the media.
