Geolocation
Airwars assessment
As many as 300 civilians were allegedly killed and injured in Tal Afar over three days of shelling. Information on the number of lives lost was retrieved from local medical sources, who said mostly women and children were killed and wounded.
According to JBC – which said that 300 civilians were killed across two days of fighting – Iraqi sources have estimated the number of troops attacking Tal Afar is about 40 000, including thousands of the popular mobilization forces of Iran, led by the paramilitary movement backed directly by the Revolutionary Guards. JBS, along with other sources, pointed to air and missile strikes and aerial bombardment as the cause of the significant number of civilian casualties.
Iraqi Spring Media and Omar al Halbusi said that 300 civilians had been killed and injured.
It is pertinent to note that these are general civilian casualty numbers, spanning two to three days, therefore this entry may encompass other entries recorded by Airwars.
The Coalition has confirmed two civilian casualty events in Tal Afar for this date range, see I631a and I631b below.
The local time of the incident is unknown.
Geolocation notes
Reports of the incident mention the city of Tal Afar (تلعفر), for which the coordinates are: 36.375659, 42.451536. Due to limited satellite imagery and information available to Airwars, we were unable to verify the location further.
Summary
Sources (3) [ 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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The report contains insufficient information of the time, location and details to assess its credibility
Original strike reports
For August 18th-19th the Coalition reported “Near Tal Afar, three strikes destroyed 24 vehicles, two tunnels, two weapons caches, two front-end loaders, a command and control node, a staging area, an explosives factory, an explosives cache, and a fighting position, and damaged three bridges and two supply routes.”