Mosul: An initial investigation of a recent airstrike believed to have killed more than 200 civilians in Mosul found it was conducted by the US-led coalition at the request of Iraqi security forces, the Pentagon said on Saturday.
Witnesses said the airstrike killed hundreds of residents on Baghdad Street in west Mosul's Aghawat Jadidah neighbourhood on March 17, including many women and young children. On Friday, in an area where apartment blocks were reduced to rubble, at least 50 bodies could be seen, including those of pregnant women, children and newborns.
On Saturday, a day after announcing that the incident was under investigation, Pentagon officials released a statement saying the coalition had targeted Islamic State fighters and equipment in the area on March 17, "at the location corresponding to allegations of civilian casualties".
The coalition said that it takes allegations of civilian casualties seriously and that a formal Civilian Casualty Credibility Assessment of the airstrike and the civilian toll is under way.
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"The coalition respects human life, which is why we are assisting our Iraqi partner forces in their effort to liberate their lands from ISIS brutality," the statement said, using an acronym for Islamic State.
The airstrike, if found to be responsible for the fatalities, would mark the deadliest civilian casualty incident by far since the US military began its involvement in mid-2014. The credibility assessment, in which the military gathers and analyses an array of information that is classified and public, is expected to take two to three weeks.
The focus of the inquiry will be whether the coalition airstrike hit civilian buildings; whether an accumulation of airstrikes in the area degraded the structural integrity of buildings before they fell; or whether Islamic State detonated an explosion after the airstrike to bring structures down, according to Colonel John Thomas, Central Command spokesman.
"This sort of assessment is really complex," Colonel Thomas said. "It gets especially difficult to determine what happened in certain areas of the city where the streets are so narrow that large vehicles cannot get through."
Another likely possibility is that an airstrike hit or triggered an Islamic State suicide car bomb. Militants have deployed the mobile bombs, in which a driver will blow himself up in the face of advancing Iraqi forces. Witnesses said militants parked a truck packed with explosives on their block days before the airstrike, then forced families inside their homes as they lingered outside, sniping from roofs.
Some saw militants shooting at aircraft before the strike, then saw the truck explode during the attack. United Nations officials said they were "profoundly concerned" by the allegations surrounding the airstrike.
"We're incredibly worried about what is happening in western Mosul. It's much, much, much worse than the east for civilians," Lise Grande, the UN's humanitarian co-ordinator for Iraq, said on Saturday.
The military is investigating at least a dozen other reports of civilian casualties in Mosul.
The Pentagon has acknowledged 220 civilian deaths from coalition airstrikes in Iraq and Syria since the US campaign against Islamic State began in 2014. Independent monitoring groups such as the London-based non-profit Airwars put the casualty figures much higher, at about 2700 civilians killed in airstrikes in both countries during that time.
"Our goal has always been for zero civilian casualties," the Pentagon said on Saturday. "But the coalition will not abandon our commitment to our Iraqi partners because of ISIS' inhuman tactics terrorising civilians, using human shields, and fighting from protected sites such as schools, hospitals, religious sites and civilian neighbourhoods."
There were reports on Saturday that Iraqi forces had halted operations across Mosul in response to the airstrike, but officials said that wasn't true.
"We didn't stop our operation. Our operation is still ongoing, but it's not like before," said Raed Shaker Jawdat, Iraq's federal police chief.
"We are now going slowly," he said, because the Old City area where they have been fighting is densely populated. Iraqi leaders called for investigations into the strike, and greater restraint by forces fighting to free Mosul.
"We realise the huge responsibility the liberating forces shoulder," Iraqi parliament speaker Salim Jabouri tweeted, calling on them to "spare no effort to save the civilians".
Iraqi Vice-President Osama Nujaifi, a Mosul native, issued a statement calling the strike a "humanitarian catastrophe" that killed hundreds. He blamed the US-led coalition and federal police for using excessive force and called for an emergency session of Parliament to address the incident.
Atheel Nujaifi, the former Mosul governor, called for a UN investigation into the airstrike. Otherwise, he said, Iraqi forces are unlikely to adjust their tactics.
"They need to change the military operation, to deal with it as a city, not an open area. There's citizens inside it, so they need to use minimal fire, not huge bombs," he said. "I don't think it will change anything if there's no international pressure."
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