{"id":46940,"date":"2021-11-16T14:23:15","date_gmt":"2021-11-16T14:23:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=46940"},"modified":"2021-11-16T14:23:15","modified_gmt":"2021-11-16T14:23:15","slug":"coalition-airstrikes-target-houthi-militants-to-support-forces-in-west-coast","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=46940","title":{"rendered":"Coalition airstrikes target Houthi militants to support forces in west coast"},"content":{"rendered":"<div readability=\"93\">\n<p>\n\tLONDON: US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin III has ordered the military\u2019s top commander for the Middle East to brief him on details of a 2019 airstrike that killed dozens of women and children in Syria, the Pentagon said.<\/p>\n<p>\n\tAustin requested the briefing after allegations by the New York Times that top officers and civilian officials sought to conceal the casualties of the strike, said Pentagon spokesman John Kirby.<\/p>\n<p>\n\tThe 2019 strike, exposed by the NYT over the weekend, took place in the town of Baghuz, in Daesh\u2019s last holdout before the end of its so-called caliphate.<\/p>\n<p>\n\tA drone controller witnessed a jet drop a bomb on what the operator estimated to be 50 women and children, but the military has now admitted that 80 people were killed, dozens of them women and children.<\/p>\n<p>\n\t\u201cWho dropped that?\u201d a confused analyst typed on a secure chat system being used by those monitoring the drone, two people who reviewed the chat log recalled. The NYT reported that another responded: \u201cWe just dropped on 50 women and children.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\n\tTwo more large bombs were dropped on the crowd, wiping out anyone who survived the initial blast.<\/p>\n<p>\n\tIt is one of the highest civilian casualty incidents in the international coalition\u2019s war against Daesh, but it had never been publicly acknowledged by military officials.<\/p>\n<p>\n\tDespite legal officers immediately reporting the incident up the chain of command, a thorough investigation into the bombing was never conducted.<\/p>\n<p>\n\tGen. Kenneth F. McKenzie Jr., head of US Central Command \u2014 which oversaw the air war in Syria \u2014 will \u201cbrief (Austin) more specifically on that particular airstrike\u201d and its handling, the Pentagon said.<\/p>\n<p>\n\tKirby refused to comment on the strike in a press briefing. \u201cI\u2019m not going to relitigate a strike that happened back in March of 2019,\u201d he said, instead emphasizing and defending US procedures intended to mitigate harm against civilians.<\/p>\n<p>\n\t\u201cNo military in the world works as hard as we do to avoid civilian casualties,\u201d Kirby said. \u201cThat doesn\u2019t mean that we don\u2019t always get it right. We don\u2019t. We work hard to avoid civilian harm. We also want to take a look at ourselves.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\n\tLast week, after the NYT sent its findings to US Central Command, it acknowledged the attack for the first time and admitted that it killed 80 people.<\/p>\n<p>\n\tHuman rights advocates expressed outrage on Monday at the strike and the military\u2019s handling of it, and called on Congress to open an independent investigation.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>LONDON: US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin III has ordered the military\u2019s top commander for the Middle East to brief him on details of a 2019 airstrike that killed dozens of women and children in Syria, the Pentagon said. Austin requested the briefing after allegations by the New York Times that top officers and civilian officials&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":46941,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-46940","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-middle_east_news","category-spotlight_news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46940","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=46940"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46940\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/46941"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=46940"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=46940"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=46940"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}