According to a media report from Canada's national broadcast corporation, Canadian bombs killed anywhere from 6 to 27 Iraqi civilians — a revelation that, if true, would be the first known incident of air munitions from that country to kill innocents in Iraq.

The CBC's fifth estate, the 60 Minutes-styled news magazine show of the network, released the allegation today touting information obtained from an internal Pentagon report and human rights watchdogs keeping tabs on coalition bombing missions in the embattled Middle Eastern country.

But if Canadian Forces sources are to be believed, the allegation is false and has stood the tests of an internal review. Furthermore, the Canadian government says it does not have a legal obligation to continue investigating the alleged incident.

"The CAF review identified that there were no substantive grounds to believe that civilians had been killed," the Canadian government told the fifth estate. "Furthermore, subsequent to the allegations, there was no information from the Iraqi Security Forces or government suggesting there may have been civilian casualties."

Canada's contribution — dubbed Operation IMPACT, its bombing campaign against so-called Islamic State forces — began last fall and has so far flown over 1,426 sorties in a combination of surveillance and bombing missions.

Canadian CF-18 Hornet fighters — equipped with smart munitions dropped in coordination with intelligence operations on the ground — stand accused of a Jan. 21 incident northwest of the Iraqi city of Mosul, a frequent site of battle with IS, wherein 6 to 27 Iraqi civilians were killed.

According to the report, the allegation of civilian deaths originally came from a Peshmerga soldier who told a Special Forces operator on the ground. The message was then relayed to central command.

A conglomerate of Canadian commandos from both JTF2 and CSOR — Canada's two special operations regiments — are currently training Pesh forces against IS in northern Iraq.

On the official CAF website for Operation IMPACT, a bombing mission against an "ISIS fighting position" is indeed noted. Bombing the "northwest of Mosul" area was clearly an area of interest according to the same figures: missions continued on the 23 and 29 of the same month and were done as early as the 18 against the same location.

VICE News asked the Department of National Defense to comment on this story and it was referred to the statement provided to the fifth estate.

As a western military, the CAF has been uncharacteristically transparent about Operation IMPACT, releasing regular updates about the campaign and providing a multimedia platform promoting the actions of Canada's soldiers in Iraq.

For years, Prime Minister Stephen Harper has rued Canada's inaction in Iraq when American forces first invaded the country in 2003, famously writing an apology in the Wall Street Journal to the American people for Canada's refusal to go to war under the-then Liberal government.

Under Harper the country joined coalition forces in the fall of 2014, just before an attack against Canada's parliament left one soldier dead. The Canadian government extended its mission in Iraq in March of this year, ensuring Canadian warplanes and special forces trainers would remain in the country longer than the original mission outlined in 2014.

Harper is currently in the midst of a re-election bid and faces falling poll numbers in advance of an Oct. 19 election date. His Conservative party is campaigning on a strong national security platform with the Iraq mission a hallmark of that strategy.