Sheikh Hasan Haji Abdul Salam, a Shiite from Syria, told The Associated Press on Thursday that the U.S.-led coalition is responsible for the air strikes on his village, Rawa.
“They came a few hours after the bombing, they dropped a bomb next to the house and fired many missiles hitting the house and village, and they killed three people inside the house,” Abdul Salam said of the airstrikes.
He said there were no coalition planes in the area on Sunday. “I was inside and that’s that.”
It didn’t help that a U.S. military official said Monday that there was no evidence of any U.S. soldiers in Iraq and officials said such fighters from that country are generally fighting with a Sunni militant group named the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant.
“There was no presence of U.S., coalition, or Iraqi forces,” Army Col. Steve Warren said in a briefing in Baghdad.
It wasn’t immediately clear why U.S. intelligence officials didn’t tell Washington earlier about the strike on Rawa.
The U.S.-government has long sought to dispel any notion that American forces are fighting alongside militants in Iraq and is working closely with the Iraqi military on intelligence sharing and airstrikes to protect civilians in Iraq, particularly in areas near front lines where the U.S. military has found no insurgents.
The CIA and Pentagon declined to comment on whether they also shared information with the Iraqi military, and the U.S. military was conducting an assessment “to determine how this incident occurred,” Warren said. An assessment is being conducted, he said, “based on the data available at this time.”
In Rawa the coalition said it was assessing the incident as a potential “loss of life.” It said the coalition is working closely with Iraqi forces who continue to conduct daily raids on ISIS targets.
The U.S. said it took all reasonable steps to avoid civilian casualties. It also said that if the coalition could corroborate credible reports of civilian deaths that would lead to a re-focus, “we would share those information quickly with the appropriate officials and the appropriate media outlets.”
Iraq is battling Islamic militants in Mosul, the largest city under their control in both Iraq and Syria. Iraq’s air force conducted more than 450 airstrikes near Rawa on July 19, the day after the strike that killed three civilians and wounded five others, an AFP reporter said