A freshly married couple in Iraq are feared to have been killed, and two children injured, by an RAAF airstrike on Mosul in 2017. The ADF (Australian Defence Force) has outlined two āthorough investigationsā that have decided that casualties of civilians were a probability when an Super Hornet fired a guided bomb into a building where ISIS (Islamic State) snipers were fighting local forces.
Major General Greg Bilton, the deputy chief of joint operations, said that āon the balance of probabilitiesā the airstrike could be confirmed to have caused the ādeath of two peopleā as well as āthe injury of two othersā.
The airstrike took place on the 3rd of May during the most chaotic moments of the intense 8 month battle for Mosul. Maj Bilton said that āa single precision guided munitionā was fired an collapsed the ādefensive fighting positionā that was within the building.
Maj Bilton went on to say that they ādeeply regret the loss of civiliansā but that the ADF prided itself on attempting to always have āzero civilian casualtiesā.
The investigations were launched following eyewitness testimony that was presented to Amnesty International which passed the information onto Airwars. Airwars is an international project that works to monitor the harm of civilians in military actions.
The testimony said that they were leaving the house when they heard an airstrike hit where there brother and wife lived. They said that there were no ISIS fighters around at the time otherwise they would not have been able to walk out of their homes.
Marise Payne, Australian Defence Minister, said that the deaths were āvery regrettableā but reaffirmed that the RAAF did everything it could to prevent civilian deaths.
Payne said that it was āvery importantā to acknowledge that the strike occurred in a ācomplex urban environmentā and that they were operating in a āwar zoneā. She said that Australian pilot always work to the āhighest standardsā but that āincident like this happenā.
Senator Payne also said that ISIS fighters would routinely use civilians as human shields and she rejected the claim that there were no enemies inside the building. She said that the strike only took place because of corroborated reports that Iraqi forces were under attack by snipers in that particular building.
The attack, which killed the couple that had been married only 20 days earlier, took place in the West Mosul neighbourhood of Islah al Zirae. The testimony reported that ISIS fighters hid ābetweenā the civilians and that it was impossible for them not to obey their commands.