US General Admits killing 100s of civilians in Mosul
YEmenExtra
A large number of Iraqi civilians has been killed with a coalition airstrike in western Mosul ,U S commander admitted.
“We probably had a role in those casualties,” Lieutenant General Stephen Townsend said to reporters on Tuesday.
He noted that Daesh’s was the reason for the high number of casualties repulsive practice of using civilians as human shields.
On March 17, 237 people had been killed as a result of US-led coalition airstrikes on a Daesh-held neighborhood in western MosulIraq’s , Kurdish-language Rudaw television network reported .
“The enemy had a role in this,” he added, stressing that “It sure looks like” the civilians has been obligied to gather in the building by the terrorists. “What I don’t know is why they [the civilians] gathered there by the enemy?”
Though admitting to the US’s involvement in the incident, Townsend noted that the munitions used by US-led coalition forces in densely-populated urban areas were not designed to cause such a level of destruction.
Last week, a senior Iraqi military official announced that the civilian killed in Mosul as a result ofUS-led coalition airstrike on a Daesh truck carrying explosives .
The Pentagon announced that it was analyzing about 700 video feeds from airstrikes on west Mosul following the increasing number of reports of civilian causalities,on Monday .
A spokesman for the US Central Command, Colonel J.T. Thomas, stressed that high priority was being given to the reports. He added that the US knew that they were dropping bombs in the “immediate vicinity” of areas with a high civilian population but their bombs were “quite accurate .”
The US had previously admitted waging airstrikes in Mosul on the day of the bloody tragedy.
UN cautions US-led cotillion to avoid civilian casualties
Meanwhile, the UN has called on the US-led coalition in Iraq to take further measures towards protecting civilians while noting that Daesh was forcing residents into targeted buildings and areas .
In a report, the UN’s high commissioner for human rights, Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein, also called on all forces involved in anti-terror operations in Iraq to “avoid the trap” of strucking buildings in which Daesh had planted explosives and push civilians to live .
He added that the terrorists “strategy of using children, men and women to shield themselves from attack is cowardly and disgraceful. It breaches the most basic standards of human dignity and morality.”
On Monday, Amnesty International also expressed its concerns about the number of civilian casualties in Mosul, proposing the US-led coalition may not be doing enough to avoid such casualties.
Iraqi army soldiers and allied fighters waged an offensive to retake Mosul in October 2016. The forces took control of eastern Mosul in January and waged the battle in the west on February 19.