US military admits killing two dozen Syrian civilians in July airstrike

The US military has admitted culpability for killing approximately two dozen civilians in a July airstrike outside the Syrian city of Manbij, then the scene of fierce fighting with Islamic State militants.

By the Pentagon’s account, the strike, which hit the Syrian village of Tokhar near Manbij, represents the single worst incidence of civilian casualties in the entire US war against Isis, the Guardian reported. But human rights monitors believe the US military is still undercounting the death toll, which is substantially lower than the ranges those monitors have compiled, the newspaper added.

The Syrian Network for Human Rights has listed, mostly by name, 98 men, women and children dead from the July airstrike. The human-rights monitor Airwars, based in the UK, assesses civilian deaths in the strike to range between 73 and 203.

In a statement on Thursday, US central command (Centcom), said that an internal investigation had concluded that “up to 24” civilians died from the bombing.

Centcom said the civilian deaths resulted from Isis “interspers[ing]” civilians with its fighters at an area identified as a staging ground for a “counterattack” against US and proxy forces.

The US said the airstrike targeted the area and “inadvertently” killed the non-combatants alongside nearly 100 Isis militants.

 “Unknown to Coalition planners, civilians were moving around within the military staging area, even as other civilians in the nearby village had departed over the previous days,” Centcom said in its statement.