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DEMOCRACY DIES IN THE DARKNESS: NY Times Investigative Report. . .Open Accounting Special Ops Unit Task Force 9

THE HAZY AFTERMATH

Although it was admitted later, "The military is now acknowledging the strikes for the first time — after the Times reached out — claiming they took the lives of 80 people. The Pentagon said the bombs killed 16 fighters and four civilians; as for the other 60 who perished, it was “not clear that they were civilians, in part because women and children in the Islamic State sometimes took up arms.”

U.S. Military Reportedly Concealed Syria Airstrike That Killed Dozens Of Civilians

Kimberlee Speakman

Forbes | 2021-11-13

Topline

"The U.S. Department of Defense tried to conceal a 2019 airstrike during the campaign against the Islamic State in Syria that resulted in one of the largest civilian death tolls in the war, an incident that some within the military believed was a possible war crime, according to a New York Times investigation.

The Times found that airstrikes were called in near Baghuz — the site of the last Islamic State stronghold in Syria — on March 18, 2019, by special operations unit Task Force 9, that staff at the Combined Air Operations Center in Qatar watching via drone believed had hit a crowd of women and children.

The bombing was flagged by an Air Force lawyer as a potential war crime, who then reported it to his chain of command, but it did not set off a thorough, independent investigation, the Times says.

U.S. Central Command acknowledged to the Times that 80 people were killed in the airstrikes, but said that it had only identified four civilians that were killed alongside 16 Islamic state fighters, while the other 60 killed, which included women and children, may not have been civilians.

According to the Times, Air Force lawyer Lt. Col. Dean Korsak pressed for an investigation of the events, eventually submitting a letter to the Senate Armed Services Committee saying senior ranking military officials “intentionally and systematically circumvented the deliberate strike process” and were “clearly seeking to cover up the incidents.” 

Some officials overseeing the air campaign against Islamic State believed that Task Force 9 had repeatedly claimed false pretexts to order airstrikes that were not given the normal vetting to prevent civilian deaths, according to the Times.

Gene Tate, a former evaluator in the DoD inspector general’s office, told the Times that he was forced out of his job after he complained that the office was not adequately investigating the incident."

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Smoke after the shelling of the Islamic State’s last holdout of Baghuz by Kurdish-led forces backed by U.S. warplanes in March 2019.   Getty Images

U.S. Military Buried Syria Airstrike That Killed a Crowd of Women and Children, Report

The military ignored calls for an independent investigation from an Air Force lawyer who believed the bombing may have constituted a war crime, according to a report by ‘The New York Times’

   

By Peter Wade

Near the end of the conflict with the Islamic State in Syria, the U.S. military carried out a bombing that killed dozens of women and children in a town called Baghuz, The New York Times reported Saturday.

On March 18, 2019, an American F-15E attack jet dropped two bombs — first one weighing 500 pounds, then another weighing 2,000 pounds — onto a crowd made up mostly of women and children. The military action was part of President Donald Trump’s campaign to defeat ISIS in Syria.

Moments before the bombing occurred, a drone was hovering above the crowd searching for potential military targets, the Times reported. After the first bomb detonated, one of the drone’s analysts typed in a secure chat for people monitoring the drone, “Who dropped that?” because they hadn’t been forewarned that the strike was coming.

Another analyst replied, “We just dropped on 50 women and children.” The final casualty count would end up being much higher. Responding to the Times’ inquiry about the incident, the military acknowledged it for the first time . . .

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