4 civilians killed in US airstrike in Iraq: US military

The United States has admitted that an American airstrike on a Daesh (ISIL) target in Iraq back in March killed four civilians, including one child.

The rare acknowledgment came following a long investigation first prompted by a non-governmental organization that notified the US military that civilians might have been killed in the attack on March 13.

“The preponderance of the evidence gathered during the investigation indicates that the air(strike) likely resulted in the deaths of four non-combatants,” US Air Forces Central Command commander Lt. Gen. C.Q. Brown said on Friday.

“One of the non-combatants may have been a child,” Brown said. "We regret the unintentional loss of lives and keep those families affected in our thoughts.”

US Central Command has released a memorandum describing the findings of the investigation which show how the strike happened at an ISIL checkpoint near Hatra.

According to the memorandum, the US military investigators had already concluded that the checkpoint was a valid target before two vehicles arrived there.

US Air Force had the militants in their sights when the drivers of the two vehicles got off and had an interaction with the checkpoint personnel.

The interaction gave the US Combined Air Operations Center reason to think they were tied to the Takfiri group. Thus, the aircrews received permission to go ahead with the strike and an A-10 attack plane released its weapons.

However, an investigation later determined that they were likely civilians in the car who were not combatants.

"I think it's safe to say if we knew there were civilians, we would not have conducted a strike," Col. Patrick Ryder, a spokesman for US Central Command, told reporters. "There was no indication until after weapons release that there could potentially be civilians on that site."

This was not the first time US military killed civilians in its attacks on ISIL targets. Earlier this year, the US military said that two children had been killed in an airstrike in Syria in November 2014.

ISIL terrorists, who were initially trained by the CIA in Jordan in 2012 to destabilize the Syrian government, now control parts of Syria and Iraq. They have been engaged in crimes against humanity in the areas under their control.

The American-led military attacks against purported Daesh positions in Iraq started in June, 2014. A similar coalition launched airstrikes in Syria one month later.

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