Geolocation
Airwars assessment
On the first day of a major Iraqi and Coalition assault to recapture Mosul, nine civilians including five members of one family were alleged killed in an airstrike.
Iraq News reported “intensive Coalition raids on the areas of Bab al Jadid and Hadbah, west of Mosul, with reports of civilian casualties.” Accordng to Islam Memo, “Nine civilians were killed, including five members of one family, as a result of aerial bombing on Monday morning which targeted residential areas in downtown Mosul.” It said the dead included “an eighty-year-old woman and her son, his wife and two of their children.”
Elements of this incident were later confused by some reports with a separate Mosul event on October 18th-19th.
Given reported British actions in the area that day, Airwars flagged the incident to the UK’s MoD which said “we can confirm that there was no UK involvement” in the event.
The local time of the incident is unknown.
Summary
Sources (5) [ collapse]
Attached to this civilian harm incident is a provisional reconciliation of the Pentagon's declassified assessment of this civilian harm allegation, based on matching date and locational information.
The declassified documents were obtained by Azmat Khan and the New York Times through Freedom of Information requests and lawsuits filed since March 2017, and are included alongside the corresponding press release published by the Pentagon. Airwars is currently analysing the contents of each file, and will update our own assessments accordingly.
US-led Coalition Assessment:
Civilian casualty statements
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After a review of available information it was assessed that no Coalition strikes were conducted in the geographical area that correspond to the report of civilian casualties.
Original strike reports
For October 17th-18th 2016, the Coalition reported that ” Near Mosul, four strikes [2 British] engaged three ISIL tactical units and two staging areas; destroyed 10 mortar systems, five artillery systems, four ISIL-held buildings, four fighting positions, four vehicles, two supply caches, two repeater tower generators, a VBIED facility, and a VBIED; and suppressed four tactical units and three rocket positions.”