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The three individuals accustomed to the findings, who spoke on the situation of anonymity to debate particulars of the confidential report, stated that 56 individuals had been killed, however that 52 of them have been enemy fighters, though that evaluation labeled all grownup males within the strike as fighters, whether or not they have been armed or not. The officers additionally stated 17 individuals had been injured, 15 of whom have been civilians.
The Baghuz assault was a part of a sequence of investigations by The Occasions final yr into airstrikes that killed civilians, together with a botched drone strike in Kabul, Afghanistan, that killed 10 harmless individuals in August. One other Occasions investigation primarily based on a trove of Pentagon opinions of strikes revealed systemic failures to forestall civilian deaths in america’ air struggle towards the Islamic State.
Final week, the sequence was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for worldwide reporting. John F. Kirby, the Pentagon spokesman, acknowledged that the reporting was “not snug, not straightforward and never easy to deal with.”
In response to The Occasions’s investigation, Mr. Austin ordered a standardized reporting course of on civilian hurt, the creation of a army “middle of excellence” and the completion of a complete new coverage on the difficulty that has been within the works for greater than two years. That coverage evaluate continues to be underway, with particulars of the preliminary plan anticipated by the top of June, Pentagon officers stated.
“Defending harmless civilians is prime to our operational success and is a strategic and ethical crucial,” Mr. Austin stated in his memo on Tuesday.
The Baghuz strike occurred within the final days of the offensive to clear Islamic State fighters from their self-proclaimed caliphate, which had as soon as sprawled throughout areas of Syria and Iraq. American F-15 assault jets made repeated bombing runs on a riverbank the place scores of girls, youngsters and wounded individuals had taken shelter.
Air Power personnel at a headquarters in Qatar who have been watching drone footage taken from excessive above the positioning instantly reported the strike, saying that about 70 civilians could have been killed, and notified leaders {that a} formal investigation was required.
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