(Previous Incident Code: I447b)

Local sources and the UN reported that up to hundred civilians were killed or injured after airstrikes targeted residential houses in Rajm Hadid neighborhood, on March 22 in West Mosul.

According to the UNHCR an airstrike [not specified] hit a residential building in the neighbourhood. It said: “ISIL reportedly filled the house with people from the surrounding neighbourhood, including children, and then used the house to launch rocket-propelled grenades against the Iraqi Security Forces. The airstrike killed a seven-year-old girl and trapped eight other children under the rubble, seven of whom were later found and taken to hospital.”

According to Al Jazeera, ISIL had launched a surprise attack on the Iraqi Forces fighting in the area. The Iraqi Spring Media Center blamed the US for the strike and said that “about 100 bodies of civilians in the Rajm Hadid [neighbourhood], killed by a US strike last week, are still under the rubble and government forces are preventing journalists and aid organizations from entering the neighborhood.”

Iraqyoon Agency and Ninawa Media Center quoted the spokeswoman of the Russian foreign ministry, who said that “the international Coalition committed a massacre, similar to the massacre of the New Mosul, in the district of Rajm Hadid, West of Mosul.”