Granny says, "Dat's right - is all ISIS' fault - dey tricked us into it...
Airstrike chain reaction led to over 100 civilian deaths in Mosul
May 25, 2017 -- U.S. Central Command on Thursday said more than 100 Iraqi civilians in Mosul died in March after a U.S.-led coalition airstrike targeting two Islamic State snipers detonated other explosives.
See also:The incident occurred at about 8 a.m. on March 17 in Mosul's al-Jadidah district after Iraqi security forces fighting the Islamic State on the ground requested a coalition airstrike. CENTCOM said the international coalition fighting the Islamic State, also called ISIS, ISIL or Daesh, concluded an investigation and "found that the secondary explosion of ISIS-emplaced material triggered a rapid failure of the structure which killed the two ISIS snipers, 101 civilians sheltered in the bottom floors of the structure and four civilians in a neighboring structure."
U.S. Central Command on Thursday said a U.S.-led coalition airstrike caused a chain reaction with Islamic State explosives that killed more than 100 civilians in Mosul on March 17.
CENTCOM said 36 other civilians who are in some way associated with the building remain missing. "Our condolences go out to all those that were affected," Maj. Gen. Joe Martin, commanding general of the Combined Joint Task Force: Operation Inherent Resolve anti-Islamic State coalition, said in a statement. "The coalition takes every feasible measure to protect civilians from harm. The best way to protect civilians is to defeat ISIS." Investigators in post-explosive analysis found residues common to explosives used by the Islamic State but that were not consistent with the explosive content found in the GBU-38 precision-guided munition used in the airstrike.
Weapons and structural experts then concluded based on modeling that the structural damage to the building occurred in a location other than where the airstrike occurred and that the explosive damage that resulted could not have been caused by a single GBU-38 missile, CENTCOM added. "The coalition selected a single GBU-38 precision-guided munition as the most appropriate and proportionate means of engagement to neutralize the threat and to minimize collateral damage," CENTCOM said. "The GBU-38's detonation, localized to the top floor of the structure, ignited a large amount of explosive material which, unknown to the coalition, ISIS fighters had previously placed in the house." Iraq's military previously said explosives rigged by the Islamic State -- rather than airstrikes -- killed the civilians in the incident.
http://www.upi.com/Top_News/World-Ne...&utm_medium=18
ISIS Tricked US Into Bombing Building Where 100 Innocents Held Captive
25 May 2017 | The group rigged a house with 1,000 pounds of explosives, put civilians in the basement, and used snipers to bait the coalition
The Islamic State lured U.S.-led forces into conducting an airstrike in March that killed more than 100 civilians in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul, a top American military official said Thursday. An investigation into the March bombing found that the terror group rigged a house with more than 1,000 pounds of explosives, put civilians in the basement, and employed two ISIS snipers on the roof to bait the U.S.-led coalition to attack. U.S. Air Force Brig. Gen. Matthew Isler, the investigating officer for U.S. Central Command, told Pentagon reporters that the bomb used by the American jet, a GBU-38 (500-pound bomb), would not have caused the type of damage associated with the destruction of the building.
The probe found that the U.S. bomb triggered secondary explosions from devices clandestinely planted in the lower floors of the concrete building, Isler said. He said neither the Iraqi troops nor the Americans who authorized and conducted the airstrike knew civilians were in the building or that the explosive materials were present. Isler added that the home's 30-inch concrete walls were "completely pulverized," but the GBU-38, which has a 192-pound warhead, could not have caused such destruction. The GBU-38 is designed to take out enemy combatants on roof tops, not collapse entire structures.
Rescue teams search through the debris of a house destroyed in a March 17, 2017, U.S. airstrike in the western sector of Mosul in this file photo from March 24, 2017. The strike killed more than 100 civilians.
The American bomb "wouldn't even dent any of the surrounding walls," he added. How ISIS managed to smuggle in half a ton of explosives remains in question, but Isler said bad weather over two days prior to the airstrike hampered the U.S. military's ability to conduct drone reconnaissance over the target area in Mosul and that the weather combined with intense fighting led to "multiple opportunities" for ISIS to smuggle in both the explosives and the civilians into the building. "We don't know when it was moved to the residence," Isler said. "No one saw ISIS move explosives into that area."
Isler said Iraqi forces suffered casualties hours after the strike as they attempted to recover Iraqi civilians killed in the strike and rescue others wounded and trapped under the rubble. Some 101 civilians in the building were killed, and another four died in a nearby building, while 36 civilians remain unaccounted for. The airstrike was likely the largest single incident of civilian deaths since the U.S. air campaign against ISIS began in 2014. The deaths represent about a quarter of all civilian deaths associated with U.S. airstrikes since the air campaign began in 2014.
http://www.military.com/daily-news/2...d-captive.html
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Originally Posted by Peter1469
