A top U.S. commander, sensitive to the criticism that the bombing campaign against the Islamic State is accidentally killing civilians, carefully described to reporters Tuesday how his targeters are trying to save the lives of women and children.
On April 5, the target was a man in Iraq suspected of being an “emir of finance” for the Islamic State who seemed to be disbursing cash payments from a building south of Mosul.
The U.S. monitored the building night and day, concluding it was a storage location for mounds of cash, like an Islamic State bank.
But the surveillance also revealed a woman regularly going in and out of the building, accompanied by children. The problem: How to destroy the cash cache, without the loss of innocent lives?
U.S. Air Force Maj. Gen. Peter Gersten, the deputy commander for the operation in Iraq and Syria, decided it was time to borrow a page from the Israeli playbook, and employ a tactic known as a “knock operation.”
“We went as far as actually to put a Hellfire [missile] on top of the building and air burst it so it wouldn’t destroy the building, simply knock on the roof to ensure that she and the children were out of the building. And she cleared the building, and we began to process the strike,” Gersten said.
“Interestingly enough, the men that were in that building, multiple men, literally trampled over her to get out of that building,” he added.
The follow-on strike was a success, destroying an estimated $150 million in currency, and the man known as the “emir” has not been heard from again.
But despite doing this to avoid killing civilians, the woman is question was seen going back into the building after the initial air blast and just before a second bomb destroyed the target.
U.S. Central Command now lists a single civilian casualty as a result of that strike.
Gerston told the story to dispute recent reports suggesting that a recent move by Central Command to delegate the authority to approve risky strikes to commanders in the field is increasing the chances of unintended civilian casualties. “Having the eyes of the commander watching the fight directly [and having] the responsibility to clear those fires is actually a safer operation and we are learning that.”
The U.S. cites 41 confirmed cases of civilian casualties since the allied bombing campaign began in late 2014.
Meanwhile, the U.S. estimates it has destroyed more than $500 million of the the Islamic State’s cash reserves, which is severely hampering its ability to pay its fighters and maintain morale.
“In every single way, their morale is being broken. In every single way, their capability to wage war is broken. In every single way, we will continue to take this fight and eradicate this cancer,” said Gersten as he ended his briefing from Baghdad.
