The The US Armed Forces covered two air raids in 2019 during fighting with Islamic State (IS) jihadists in Syria, which had an effect to kill 64 women and children and probably constituted war crime, revealed the New York Times.
The two air strikes near the city of Baghuz were carried out on the orders of a team of special operations of the USA who was tasked with carrying out ground missions in Syria, according to the report.
According to the NYT, the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the US Armed Forces in charge of Syria, the Central Administration (USCENTCOM), acknowledged just this week that the US Air Force had indeed launched these bombings, however, assured that they were justified.
In a statement released yesterday, CENTCOM reiterated its report to the newspaper: Among the 80 people killed, 16 were IK fighters and 4 were civilians. The Central Command added that it was not sure if the other 60 people who lost their lives were civilians or legitimate targets, in part because some women and some children were involved in the hostilities.
In the press release, o US military calls it ‘legal defense’ the blows, proportionally, and assured that took “appropriate measures to exclude the presence of civilians”.
“We hate the loss of innocent lives and we take every possible measure to prevent them. In this case, there were internal reports and an investigation into the strike was carried out based on our data and we take full responsibility for the unintentional loss of civilian lives, “CENTCOM added.
The number of civilians among the 60 victims is not determined because, according to the Central Administration, there were “several armed women and at least one armed child”.
According to the announcement, the bombings took place as the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), an Arab-Kurdish alliance, came under heavy fire, threatened to overflag and reported that there were no civilians in the area.
The inspector general conducted an internal investigation into the bombings of March 18, 2019, but his report finally “deleted” any reference to them and in fact never did a thorough and in-depth investigation into the case, according to the New York Times article. . The authors of the text relied in part on classified documents and in part on interviews with members of the armed forces involved in the operation.
A member of the Air Force Legal Service, which was at the operations center when the raids were launched, ruled that they were a war crime and later informed both the Secretary of Defense and the Senate Committee on Armed Forces that no disciplinary or other action was taken, according to the Times.
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