(Previous Incident Code: I122)

Two children were reportedly killed in an alleged Coalition strike on the town of Hemidiat to the west of Mosul.

According to Shafaqna and others, the strike hit the commercial district of the town: “The death of two children has beeen reported from an aerial bombardment by international Coalition aircraft west of Mosul. Early detection of a local source, on Thursday, reports the death of two children in an aerial bombardment by planes of the so-called international alliance which targeted Hmeidat west of the city of Mosul.”

In its monthly civilian casualty report for October 2019 – published on December 5th of that year, the Coalition assessed the event as ‘non credible’, noting that “February 3, 2015, in Humaidat, Iraq, via Airwars report. After a review of all available records it was assessed that no Coalition actions were conducted in the geographical area that corresponds to the report of civilian casualties. 2781/CI037 38SLF188306”

Coalition officials also provided Airwars with a geolocation to within 100 metres of the area reviewed.

However, Airwars had initially wrongly placed this event on February 3rd 2015 on its website. This has now been corrected, and the Coalition has re-opened the incident for review.

In the first of their March 2020 civilian casualty reports, the US-led Coalition assessed reports that they were responsible for civilian harm in this strike as “non-credible”, stating that no Coalition actions were conducted in the geographical area at that time.