WASHINGTON • US Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin has ordered a new high-level investigation into a US airstrike in Syria in 2019 that killed dozens of women and children, the Pentagon said.
The investigation by General Michael Garrett, the four-star head of the Army's Forces Command, will examine the strike carried out by a shadowy Special Operations unit called Task Force 9. It will also look into the military's initial inquiries into the strike.
Gen Garrett will have 90 days to review the inquiries and record-keeping errors, reports of civilian casualties, if any violations of laws of war occurred, if any recommendations from previous reviews were carried out, and whether anyone should be held accountable.
Mr Austin's decision on Monday came after a New York Times investigation describing allegations that top officers and civilian officials had sought to conceal the casualties from the airstrike.
The attack near the Syrian town of Baghuz on March 18, 2019, was part of the final battle against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) in a shard of a once-sprawling religious state.
It was among the largest episodes of civilian casualties in the years-long war against ISIS, but the US military had never publicly acknowledged it.
The Times investigation showed that the death toll - 80 people - was almost immediately apparent to military officials.
A legal officer flagged the bombing as a possible war crime that required an investigation.
The Defence Department's independent inspector-general began an inquiry, but the report was stripped of any mention of the strike.
The Pentagon's chief spokesman John Kirby said Mr Austin's appointment of Gen Garrett was "a reflection of how seriously he is taking the issue". Mr Austin has vowed to overhaul military procedures and hold top officers responsible for civilian harm.
The classified task force that investigated the Syria strike acknowledged that four civilians were killed, but concluded that there had been no wrongdoing.
In October 2019, the task force sent its findings to the Central Command headquarters in Florida. But officials at Central Command did not follow up. As a result, senior military officials in Iraq and Florida never reviewed the strike.
In an e-mail to the Senate Armed Services Committee last spring, the legal officer who witnessed the strike warned that "senior ranking US military officials intentionally and systematically circumvented the deliberate strike process".
After the Times sent its findings to Central Command, the command acknowledged the attack for the first time, but said that the 80 deaths were justified because the task force had launched a self-defence strike against a group of fighters who were an imminent threat to allied forces on the ground.
The command said three strikes killed 16 fighters and four civilians. It said it was not clear the other 60 people killed were civilians, in part because women and children in ISIS sometimes took up arms.
A report by the Defence Department's inspector-general released recently found there was a credible allegation of a law of war violation, but that it was not correctly reported or investigated.
It recommended that Central Command strengthen processes to ensure that episodes are promptly reported.
The command pushed back, saying it was the commander who decided what counted as a credible allegation of a violation, not the service members reporting it.
Military experts have criticised the Pentagon for not ordering an independent review of the strike.
"Once again, we'll be asked to trust that the US military can grade its own homework," said Ms Sarah Holewinski, Washington director of Human Rights Watch and a former senior adviser on human rights to the military's Joint Staff.
"I've seen these investigations into civilian deaths in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria. In none of them was anyone held accountable."
NYTIMES
