Geolocation
Airwars assessment
In an incident not previously tracked by Airwars, the Coalition later confirmed the deaths of two civilians in an event in northeast Mosul. The event was later confirmed as a British airstrike.
In its May 2018 civilian casualty report, the Coalition noted: “During a strike which destroyed Daesh vehicle-borne improvised explosive device used to attack Coalition and partner forces two civilians were unintentionally killed.”
The Coalition provided Airwars with the location of this incident, accurate to within a 100 metre box. This places the event either at the Baladiyat or Al Sukkar neighbourhood. The event was not near either of the other locations where civilian casualties were alleged in the city that day — see CI407 and CI408.
Buratha News gave some context to military developments in that neighbourhood on that day, reporting: “The eastern axis of the left coast of the Anti-Terrorism Forces forces started the two-way operation so that the northern direction was able to make progress towards Baladiyat and Sukkar neighborhood. The forces managed to liberate the Baladiyat neighborhood and raise the Iraqi flag over its buildings and destroyed a car bomb and 120 mm mortar detachment and killed more than 25 terrorists”.
Airwars researchers could not find any other locally reported claims of civilian harm in the area on this day. However the incident relates to an investigation conducted by the BBC into an alleged British civilian harm event: “The [Coalition] source described a strike on 9 January last year when an RAF Tornado fired a Brimstone missile on what was described as a ‘lorry bomb’ in eastern Mosul. It caused a large secondary explosion and the source said he believes two civilians were ‘almost certainly’ killed. The MoD insisted their ‘very careful analysis’ had concluded that those killed were ‘highly probably’ IS fighters.
“It refused a request to view the strike footage it filmed from the air and will not release the co-ordinates of other RAF airstrikes. But it did eventually confirm the location of this one strike. Many potential eyewitness to the strike were in hiding at the time but some say IS fighters were in the area. And there were reports of civilians being injured too. One man said the ‘women and men were screaming in the aftermath. Some of them were wounded.'”
BBC Defence Correspondent Jonathan Beale told Airwars that the coordinates provided by the MoD to indicate the area where they had focused their assessment were 36° 23′ 17.88″ N, 43° 09’ 36.98″ E.
In March 2020, Airwars and the BBC published an investigation revealing that the UK was refusing to accept responsibility for civilian harm in this and two other events – despite confirming that the RAF had conducted the strikes. Senior MoD officials revealed that they were insisting upon ‘hard facts’ when determining casualties – an almost impossible bar to surmount, and at odds with the US-led Coalition’s own ‘balance of probabilities’ approach.
The local time of the incident is unknown.
Summary
Sources (5) [ collapse]
US-led Coalition Assessment:
Civilian casualty statements
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January 9, 2017, near Mosul, Iraq, via media report. During a strike which destroyed Daesh vehicle-borne improvised explosive device used to attack Coalition and partner forces two civilians were unintentionally killed.
Original strike reports
For January 8th-9th the Coalition publicly noted : “Near Mosul, five strikes engaged four ISIL tactical units; destroyed three ISIL-held buildings, two vehicles, two mortar systems, a rocket propelled grenade launcher, a VBIED staging facility, and a VBIED; damaged 29 supply routes; and suppressed an ISIL tactical unit and a mortar team.”