BAGHDAD, Iraq (AFP) — Amnesty International said Tuesday the United States-led coalition was not doing enough to protect civilians in the battle to retake Iraq’s Mosul with cases of entire families killed in their homes.
Iraqi authorities launched the battle to retake the second city from the Islamic State group in October with support from coalition air strikes, recapturing its eastern side from the jihadists in January.
Amnesty’s Donatella Rovera said field research in east Mosul showed “an alarming pattern of US-led coalition air strikes which have destroyed whole houses with entire families inside.”
“The high civilian toll suggests that coalition forces… have failed to take adequate precautions to prevent civilian deaths, in flagrant violation of international humanitarian law,” she said.
In the east, the Iraqi forces adopted a strategy of encouraging civilians to stay at home, dropping leaflets into the city with safety instructions for residents.
“The fact that Iraqi authorities repeatedly advised civilians to remain at home instead of fleeing the area, indicates that coalition forces should have known that these strikes were likely to result in a significant numbers of civilian casualties,” Rovera said.
Amnesty quoted Waad Ahmad al-Tai, an east Mosul resident, as saying six members of his extended family — including his nine-year-old son and three-year-old daughter — were killed after they followed government advice not to flee the city.
“We heard these instructions on the radio… Also leaflets were dropped by planes. This is why we stayed in our homes,” he said.
Amnesty said that, in many cases it investigated, east Mosul residents said IS fighters had been present in or near houses targeted in the strikes.
In one case, five members of a family and their neighbor were killed in a raid on a house where IS fighters were hiding but the jihadists survived that attack, Amnesty quoted survivors as saying.
Rovera said the jihadist group’s use of human shields amounted to a war crime, but “does not absolve Iraqi and coalition forces from their obligation not to launch disproportionate attacks.”
Iraqi forces have been fighting to recapture west Mosul since last month, where the United Nations says hundreds of thousands of people have remained.
The UN said Tuesday more than 300 civilians have been killed since mid-February.
The coalition has said it is investigating the recent killing of large numbers of civilians in air raids on the western district of Mosul al-Jadida.
On Sunday, the top commander for US military forces in the Middle East said they would investigate the incident and “continue to take extraordinary measures to avoid harming civilians.”
Iraq is also probing the deadly air strikes in Mosul al-Jadida, where the number of victims is said to range from dozens to hundreds.
More than 200,000 civilians have fled west Mosul in the past month, according to Iraqi authorities.
