Pentagon Denies Killing Civilians in Eastern Syrian Airstrikes

Claims some mysterious other faction carried out some airstrikes too

Jason Ditz 

Posted onNovember 19, 2018CategoriesNewsTagsPentagon, Syria

After over a week of daily reports from the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reporting US airstrikes killing Syrian civilians in the area near the Iraqi border, the Pentagon has finally addressed the matter, denying all blame.

To be clear, the Pentagon confirmed that they carried out airstrikes against the towns and villages where all these civilians were killed at the same time all the civilians were killed within in airstrikes. They suggested those facts were unrelated.

Rather, the Pentagon insisted all their strikes were against “legitimate military targets,’ and that there were no civilians in those spots. By way of an attempt to explain all the dead civilians, they claimed somebody else carried out simultaneous airstrikes.

The official statement denies any knowledge of who carried out these other strikes, but condemned them as “irresponsible and dangerous” because they weren’t members of the US-led coalition that’s already bombing the towns and villages.

This is an attempt to shrug off responsibility, but doesn’t seem to be a great one. Not only is there no other air force active in this part of Syria, beyond the US and its allies, even if there were it is unthinkable that they’d be able to just happen to bomb a random village the US was also bombing without the US being able to identify them.

https://news.antiwar.com/2018/11/19/pentagon-denies-killing-civilians-in-eastern-syrian-airstrikes/