Almost three years after ISIS's defeat and departure from northern Syria, a detailed investigation by two New York Times journalists has revealed surprising information about a US airstrike that targeted the Syrian town of Baguz only 5 days before ISIS left the area for good.
According to Dave Philipps and Eric Schmitt, a US F-15E attack jet dropped a 500-pound bomb on a crowd of women and children on the 18th of March 2019. The slain civilians were spotted near the Euphrates river in the then ISIS-controlled Baguz, Deir ez-Zor.
The strikes were called in by a classified SpecOps group called Task Force 9 that was so often associated with bad strikes that the CIA reported them for killing civilians and the DoD wrote up a top secret report.
— David Philipps (@David_Philipps) November 13, 2021
The US airstrike is estimated to have killed near 70 people, most of whom were women and children in the hide. The NYT journalists referred to the airstrike as one of America's largest civilian casualties during the war against ISIS, which ended in 2019.
"A legal officer flagged the strike as a possible war crime that required an investigation. But at nearly every step, the military made moves that concealed the catastrophic strike. The death toll was downplayed. Reports were delayed, sanitized and classified. United States-led coalition forces bulldozed the blast site. And top leaders were not notified." - NYT
Philipps and Schmitt's report continued to describe the confusion amongst US officials following the airstrike since they were concerned that it could be classified as a possible "war crime" that needs immediate investigation. Yet, the report claims that official procedures ignored these concerns until the death toll was downplayed and the rest of the intelligence information was classified. Moreover, US forces had bulldozered the area several days later to hide possible traces of the strike and to possibly end any chances for investigations.
Not only #NewZealand, Syria also does matter! #US -led coalition jets bomb civilians!#Baghouz #Syria #Baguz pic.twitter.com/1GE7wN6Clz
— Jaber Aburas (@jaberaboras) March 21, 2019
NYT also states that the findings communicated to the U.S. Central Command shortly before the publication of the report, they acknowledged the airstrike for the first time and admitted to 80 casualties as a result. However, the agency explained that the hit was "justified," saying that it "was not clear that they were civilians, in part because women and children in the Islamic State sometimes took up arms."
"The only assessment done immediately after the strike was performed by the same ground unit that ordered the strike. It determined that the bombing was lawful because it killed only a small number of civilians while targeting Islamic State fighters in an attempt to protect coalition forces, the command said." - NYT
Several days after the Baguz airstrike, the area was declared free from ISIS, on the 23rd of March 2019.
Written by Riham Darwish
