Airwars assessment
Local and press sources said that 89 civilians, including 32 children, were killed and 134 others injured due to Coalition airstrikes and artillery shelling during the last 72 hours in the west of Mosul. We have reduced the figure to between 60-80 civilian deaths and 80-100 injuries for February 20th-21st in order to avoid double counting fatalities.
Adding these numbers to those of recent incidents in Mosul, Yaqein stated that: “The death toll and number of wounded of retaliatory aggression (government and international) on the right side of Mosul in Nineveh province, which started its operations around three days ago, rose to more than 220 civilians.
Iraq News quoted the Iraqi Observatory for Human Rights, which said that “because of inaccurate bombing by the international Coalition planes, 1428 civilians were killed during one month in the city of Mosul.”
In the third of their September 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 the allegation provided insufficient information on the timing and location of the strike to make a determination.
The local time of the incident is unknown.
Summary
Sources (4) [ collapse]
Attached to this civilian harm incident is the Pentagon's declassified assessment of this civilian harm allegation, obtained by Azmat Khan and the New York Times through Freedom of Information requests and lawsuits filed since March 2017, 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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Feb. 20, 2017, in Mosul, Iraq, via Airwars report. This report contains insufficient information on time, location, or details to assess its credibility. 3083/CI471 38SLF310229
Original strike reports
For February 19th-20th the Coalition publicly noted: “Near Mosul, six strikes engaged four ISIS tactical units and two ISIS staging areas; destroyed five mortar systems, four vehicles, three supply caches, three artillery systems, two command and control nodes, an ISIS headquarters, an IED facility, a heavy machine gun, a logistics node and a fighting position; damaged 15 supply routes; and suppressed nine mortar teams and an artillery team.”