Iraq investigates fatal US-led airstrikes in western Mosul

Iraqi officials have launched an investigation into two airstrikes by the US-led coalition purportedly fighting the Takfiri Daesh terrorist group that claimed the lives of more than 200 people in the country’s northern city of Mosul last week.

Brigadier-General Yahya Rasool, the spokesman for the Iraqi Joint Operations Command (JOC), said on Sunday that the Iraqi Defense Ministry “has opened an investigation into this issue.”

On Saturday, the US-led anti-Daesh coalition confirmed that it had carried out strikes on a location in western Mosul on March 17. Civilians were reportedly killed in the attack.

Iraq's Kurdish-language Rudaw television network reported late on Thursday that 237 people had been killed in US-led coalition airstrikes on a Daesh-held neighborhood in western Mosul.

The report said 137 people died when a bomb hit a single building in the densely populated Mosul al-Jadida district. Another 100 people were killed nearby.

Lise Grande, the UN Humanitarian Coordinator for Iraq, said she was “stunned by the horrendous loss of life” in the aerial attacks.

Western Mosul has recently seen Iraqi troops backed by pro-government fighters from Popular Mobilization Units, commonly known by their Arabic name, Hashd al-Sha’abi, pushing hard to flush out Daesh terrorists.

Grande urged all parties to the Mosul operation to refrain from “indiscriminate use of firepower” and “do everything possible to protect civilians.”

Bashar al-Kiki, the head of the provincial council for Nineveh, of which Mosul is the capital, said “dozens” of bodies were still buried under the rubble.

General Rasool also said government forces had deployed snipers to target those terrorists who are using civilians as human shields in Mosul. Daesh “began to use citizens as human shields, and we are trying to target them with... snipers to eliminate them.”

The senior Iraqi military figure said army forces were making use of “light and medium weapons, among them sniper (rifles), to hunt for Daesh members” disguised among civilians.

SS