‘Good faith’ mistake of misidentifying fighters loyal to Bashar al-Assad as Isis militants led to 17 September airstrikes that killed at least 15 in Deir ez-Zor

This article is more than 3 years old

This article is more than 3 years old

The US military has formally admitted fault in a major September airstrike in eastern Syria that killed at least 15 fighters loyal to the regime of dictator Bashar al-Assad.



US Central Command (Centcom), which both conducted and investigated the 17 September strike, said the attack stemmed from a “good faith” mistake that led targeters to believe the Syrian fighters, whom Centcom said did not wear uniforms, were Islamic State (Isis) militants.

British, Australian and Danish warplanes also participated in the attack and released their weapons on the mistaken target, according to US air force Brig Gen Richard Coe, the investigating officer.

Coe stopped short of apologizing to the Syrian government, saying such a statement was beyond the purview of his six-week investigation.

The strikes occurred in the eastern province of Deir ez-Zor, where the US bombs Isis fighters and positions almost every day, and where known regime loyalists are relatively few. Due to the lack of observable insignia, Centcom would not say definitively that it had killed Syrian soldiers.

“We made an unintentional, regrettable error, based on several factors in the targeting process,” Coe told reporters on Tuesday, who said he found “no intent to target Syrian [government] forces”.

Coe’s investigators were unable to access the scene of the strike, a few kilometers north of the Deir ez-Zor airfield, and the Russian military – which is supporting Assad’s campaign against Isis and rebel opposition forces – did not participate in the inquiry.

An initial report on the incident by the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights suggested that 83 people had been killed. Coe said that on the basis of contemporaneous video evidence and interviews, he could only definitively determine 15 dead regime loyalists, but added that the death toll was likely to be higher.

Soon after the incident on 17 September, Centcom said that it had halted airstrikes in progress in Deir ez-Zor after speaking to Russian officials on a channel established to deconflict the two countries’ air campaigns over Syria. In that conversation, the Russians informed their US counterparts that the targets of the strike were probably “part of the Syrian military”.

The conversation turned out to be crucial. A US military officer misidentified the coordinates of the targeted area, and presumed from the lack of Russian objection that there was no problem with the intended strike.

But Centcom said on Tuesday that the Russians made a “critical delay” before informing the US of the mistake, waiting 27 minutes for a “familiar US counterpart” to be reached.

During that time, 15 of the total 32 airstrikes occurred. Coe gave the Russians a measure of credit: “Without that call from the Russians, the strikes would have continued for longer than they did.”

Coe described the planning process for the strike unfolding over at least two days with “multiple, multiple” shift changes “in different parts of the globe” contributing to human error.

The intended strikes were substantial: warplanesand drones released 34 guided weapons and 380 rounds of 30mm ammunition on what Coe described as “defensive fighting positions, vehicles, tents, bed-down locations, tunnels and personnel”.

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The presence of a tank tipped at least one intelligence analyst to conclude that the target was not Isis, but Coe said the analyst’s assessment was neither widely distributed nor fully accurate, as earlier airstrikes against Isis had hit tanks commandeered from the Syrian regime. The tank appears to have convinced strike planners that they had located a major Isis target, and what began as a deliberate strike expanded, blurring targeting procedures, as officers and analysts became convinced they had a major target of opportunity in their crosshairs.

“Constantly challenging our own conclusions in these processes is something we need to do every time,” Coe said.

The admission of fault by the US military is the latest potential sign that the US under Donald Trump will acquiesce to a Syria under Assad’s rule.

Since his election, speculation has mounted that Trump will drop Barack Obama’s calls for Assad to relinquish power. Trump has expressed respect for Assad’s patron, President Vladimir Putin of Russia, and portrayed US support for the anti-Assad opposition forces as a disaster.

Earlier this month, Trump told the Wall Street Journal that “Syria is fighting Isis”, indicating a lack of appetite for the US to undermine the enemy of its enemy.

Trump is unlikely to arm the Syrian opposition – a policy advocated by David Petraeus, whom Trump is considering for secretary of state – because “we have no idea who these people are”. He acknowledged to the paper: “I’ve had an opposite view of many people regarding Syria.”

Assad has sounded cautiously enthusiastic since Trump’s victory, describing the president-elect as “a natural ally” to Portuguese television.

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The US admission of error comes as Assad, backed by the Russian air force, is poised for a critical victory in the northern city of Aleppo, a former center of manufacturing that years of war have turned into a graveyard. Tens of thousands of civilians are fleeing Aleppo in advance of a final bombardment that Russian leaflets reportedly describe as a pending “annihilation”.

Coe’s investigation also provided a new level of detail into the US-Russian “deconfliction” channel, established last year after the Russian air force entered the war on Assad’s behalf.

During the 17 September conversation with the Russians, the US delivered highly precise but ultimately mistaken coordinates for the intended attack, as an analyst miscommunicated. Coe said it was the “first time” that the US had called the Russians in advance of a strike with such precise location information.

“We would have a large number of aircraft operating in that small airspace for an extended period of time and we wanted to obviously notify the Russians so they’d be aware of our activities there,” Coe said.