{"id":72954,"date":"2016-05-02T12:00:00","date_gmt":"2016-05-02T11:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=72954"},"modified":"2016-05-01T21:03:36","modified_gmt":"2016-05-01T20:03:36","slug":"escalating-u-s-air-strikes-kill-hundreds-of-civilians-in-mosul-iraq","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2016\/05\/escalating-u-s-air-strikes-kill-hundreds-of-civilians-in-mosul-iraq\/","title":{"rendered":"Escalating U.S. Air Strikes Kill Hundreds of Civilians in Mosul, Iraq"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>1 May 2016 &#8211; USA Today<\/em> <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/www.usatoday.com\/story\/news\/politics\/2016\/04\/19\/new-rules-allow-more-civilian-casualties-air-war-against-isil\/83190812\/\" >revealed on April 19th<\/a> that U.S. air forces have been\u00a0operating under looser rules of engagement in Iraq and Syria\u00a0since\u00a0last fall.\u00a0 The war commander, Lt Gen McFarland, now orders air strikes that are expected to kill up to 10 civilians without prior\u00a0approval from U.S. Central Command, and U.S. officials acknowledge\u00a0that air strikes are killing more civilians under the new rules.<\/p>\n<p>U.S. officials previously claimed that air strikes\u00a0in Iraq and Syria had\u00a0killed as few as 26 civilians. \u00a0A\u00a0senior Pentagon official who is briefed daily on the air war\u00a0told <em>USA Today<\/em> that was\u00a0unrealistic, since air strikes that have\u00a0destroyed 6,000 buildings with <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/www.afcent.af.mil\/Portals\/82\/Documents\/Airpower%20summary\/03%20-%2031%20March%202016%20Airpower%20Summary.pdf?ver=2016-04-09-055912-003\" >over 40,000 bombs and missiles<\/a>\u00a0have inevitably killed much higher numbers of civilians.<\/p>\n<p>As the U.S. escalates\u00a0its\u00a0air strikes\u00a0on Mosul, the largest city\u00a0occupied by Islamic State, reports of hundreds of civilians killed by air strikes reveal some of the human costs of the U.S. air war and the new rules of engagement.<\/p>\n<p>Award-winning Iraqi environmental scientist\u00a0and Mosul native\u00a0<a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/www.nuclear-free-future.com\/en\/laureates\/laureates\/souad-naij-al-azzawi\/\" >Souad Al-Azzawi<\/a>\u00a0(Ph.D. Colorado School of Mines) has\u00a0compiled a partial list of\u00a0air strikes that have killed civilians and destroyed civilian infrastructure\u00a0from\u00a0reports by <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/Mosul-Eye-552514844870022\/\" >Mosul Eye<\/a>, <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/ShabktA3lamiwNinawa\/?fref=nf\" >Nineveh Reporters Network<\/a>, <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/almaalomah.info\/2016\/03\/20\/safity\/31461\" >Al Maalomah News Network<\/a>, other Iraqi media\u00a0and contacts in Mosul:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Many\u00a0government buildings have been destroyed.\u00a0 As U.S. officials told <em>USA Today<\/em>, attacks are often conducted at night to minimize civilian casualties, but they have killed security guards\u00a0and\u00a0civilians in neighboring buildings.<\/li>\n<li>T<a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/www.terrorism-info.org.il\/en\/articleprint.aspx?id=20991\" >elephone exchanges<\/a> have been systematically bombed and destroyed.<\/li>\n<li>Two large dairies were bombed, killing about 100 civilians and wounding 200 more.<\/li>\n<li>Multiple daytime <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=0xLdQ3DP7Fc\" >air strikes on Mosul University<\/a> on March 19th and 20th killed 92 civilians and wounded 135, mostly faculty, staff, families and students.\u00a0 Targets included the main administration building, classroom buildings,\u00a0a women\u2019s dormitory and a faculty apartment building.<\/li>\n<li>50 civilians\u00a0were killed\u00a0and 100 wounded by air strikes on 2 apartment buildings, Al Hadbaa and Al Khadraa.<\/li>\n<li>A mother and\u00a04 children were killed in an air strike on a house in the Hay al Dhubat district of East Mosul\u00a0on April 20th, next door to a house used by Islamic State that was undamaged.<\/li>\n<li>22 civilians were killed in air strikes on houses\u00a0in front of\u00a0<a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/Mosul-Medical-College-199299166765575\/\" >Mosul\u00a0Medical College<\/a>.<\/li>\n<li>20 civilians were killed and 70 wounded by air strikes on the Sunni Waqif building and nearby houses and shops.<\/li>\n<li>S. air strikes on April 24th damaged the Rashidiya water treatment plant in West Mosul and the Yarmouk power station in East Mosul.<\/li>\n<li>The <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/www.newsweek.com\/us-led-coalition-targets-isis-banks-mosul-strikes-426604\" >Central Bank of Mosul<\/a> in Ghazi Street and several branches of Rafidain and Rasheed banks were bombed, with heavy civilian casualties, despite all cash reportedly being removed after\u00a0<a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/www.dailymail.co.uk\/news\/article-3402095\/Pentagon-releases-video-U-S-airstrike-ISIS-bank-torched-millions-dollars-used-pay-terror-group-s-fighters.html\" >the first bank was struck<\/a>.<\/li>\n<li>Three workers were killed and 12 wounded in an air strike on the <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/isis.liveuamap.com\/en\/2016\/15-march-trbrtc-geolocated-alleged-cjtfoir-airstrike-on-pepsi\/comments\" >former Pepsi bottling plant<\/a>.<\/li>\n<li>An air strike on a fuel depot in an industrial area ignited an inferno with 150 casualties on April 18th.<\/li>\n<li>Bombs have damaged\u00a0a food warehouse, power stations and sub-stations\u00a0in\u00a0West Mosul, and flour mills, a pharmaceutical factory, auto repair shops and other workshops across Mosul.<\/li>\n<li>The <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/www.mirror.co.uk\/news\/world-news\/isis-controlled-supply-bridge-mosul-7710310\" >Al Hurairah Bridge<\/a> was destroyed by air strikes.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>At the very least, U.S. air strikes have killed hundreds of civilians in Mosul and destroyed much of the civilian infrastructure that people depend on for their lives in already dire conditions.\u00a0 And yet by all accounts, this is only the beginning of the U.S.-Iraqi campaign to retake Mosul. One and one-half million civilians are trapped in the city, 30 times the UN&#8217;s estimate of the number of civilians in Fallujah before\u00a0the November 2004 assault that <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/dahrjamail.net\/life-goes-on-in-fallujahs-rubble\" >killed 4,000\u00a0to 6,000 people<\/a>, mostly\u00a0civilians.\u00a0 Meanwhile ISIL prevents civilians from evacuating the city, believing that their presence protects its forces from even heavier bombardment.<\/p>\n<p>International humanitarian law strictly prohibits military attacks on civilians, civilian areas and civilian infrastructure.\u00a0 The presence of several thousand ISIL militants in a city of 1.5 million people does not justify indiscriminate\u00a0bombing or attacks on civilian targets. \u00a0As the United Nations Assistance Mission in Iraq warned U.S. officials in a <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/www.ohchr.org\/Documents\/Countries\/IQ\/HRReportAprJun2007EN.pdf\" >Human Rights Report<\/a> in 2007, \u201cThe presence of individual combatants among a great number of civilians does not alter the civilian nature of an area.\u201d \u00a0UNICEF protested <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/www.reuters.com\/article\/us-syria-crisis-aleppo-water-idUSKBN0TK4F020151201\" >the bombing of a\u00a0water treatment plant<\/a> in Syria last December as &#8220;a particularly alarming example&#8221; of how &#8220;the rules of war, including those meant to protect vital civilian infrastructure, continue to be broken on a daily basis.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The\u00a0fundamental contradiction of the militarized \u201cwar on terror\u201d has always been that U.S. aggression and other war crimes only reinforce the narratives of jihadis who see themselves as a bulwark against foreign aggression and\u00a0neocolonialism in the Muslim world. \u00a0Meanwhile\u00a0U.S. wars and covert operations\u00a0against secular enemies like Hussein, Gaddafi and Assad create\u00a0new zones of chaos where\u00a0jihadis\u00a0can\u00a0thrive.<\/p>\n<p>President Obama has acknowledged publicly that there is therefore <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/www.commondreams.org\/views\/2014\/09\/23\/there-no-military-solution-obama-launches-new-us-war-syria\" >\u201cno military solution\u201d<\/a> to jihadism.\u00a0 But successive U.S. administrations have proven unable to resist the lure of military escalation at each new stage of this crisis, unleashing wars that have <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/consortiumnews.com\/2016\/01\/17\/playing-games-with-war-deaths\/\" >killed about two million people<\/a>, plunged a dozen countries into\u00a0chaos and exploded Wahhabi jihadism from its original safe havens in Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan\u00a0and Pakistan\u00a0to countries across the world.<\/p>\n<p>If the U.S. and its Iraqi allies\u00a0follow through with their threatened assault on Mosul, the resulting massacre\u00a0will join Fallujah, Guantanamo and U.S. drone wars as a\u00a0powerful\u00a0catalyst for the next\u00a0mutation of Wahhabi jihadism,\u00a0which is likely to be\u00a0more globalized\u00a0and\u00a0unified.<\/p>\n<p>But although Al Qaeda and Islamic State have proven adept at manipulating U.S. leaders into\u00a0ever-escalating\u00a0cycles of violence, the\u00a0jihadis\u00a0cannot directly order American pilots to bomb civilians.\u00a0 Only our\u00a0leaders can do that, making them\u00a0morally and legally responsible\u00a0for these\u00a0crimes, just\u00a0as\u00a0Islamic State\u2019s leaders\u00a0are responsible\u00a0for theirs.<\/p>\n<p>__________________________________________<\/p>\n<p><em>Nicolas J S Davies is the author of<\/em>\u00a0Blood on Our Hands: the American Invasion and Destruction of Iraq\u00a0<em>and of the chapter on &#8220;Obama At War&#8221; in<\/em>\u00a0Grading the 44th President: A Report Card on Barack Obama&#8217;s First Term as a Progressive Leader.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The war commander, Lt Gen McFarland, now orders air strikes that are expected to kill up to 10 civilians without prior approval from U.S. Central Command, and U.S. officials acknowledge that air strikes are killing more civilians under the new rules. The fundamental contradiction of the militarized \u201cwar on terror\u201d is that U.S. aggression and other war crimes only reinforce the narratives of jihadis who see themselves as a bulwark against foreign aggression and neocolonialism in the Muslim world.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[57],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-72954","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-militarism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72954","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=72954"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72954\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=72954"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=72954"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=72954"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}