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US air strike on IS killed 105 civilians in Iraq's Mosul | |
(35 minutes later) | |
The United States has admitted that at least 105 Iraqi civilians were killed in an air strike it carried out in Mosul in March. | |
US Central Command (CentCom) said it had targeted two snipers from so-called Islamic State (IS) with what it called a "precision-guided munition." | |
However, the strike detonated explosives that militants had placed in the building, CentCom said. | |
Civilians sheltering in the lower floors were killed when it collapsed. | |
CentCom said the death toll included four civilians in another nearby structure. | |
Eyewitnesses claimed another 36 non-combatants were also in the building, but US authorities said it had "insufficient evidence to determine their status". | |
CentCom previously said the planes had acted at the request of Iraqi security forces, as coalition forces attempted to wrest control of the city from IS. | |
A summary of the investigation said those organising the strike "could not have predicted the presence of civilians in the structure prior to the engagement". | |
The explosives hidden by IS were at least four times more powerful than the weapon used in the air strike, it said. | |
Initial media reports had placed the casualty estimates as high as 200. | |
Hundreds of thousands of civilians have fled the northern Iraqi city as the operation to reclaim it has continued. | |
Thousands of Iraqi security forces, Kurdish Peshmerga fighters, Sunni Arab tribesmen and Shia militiamen, assisted by US-led coalition warplanes and military advisers, are involved in the offensive, which was launched in October 2016. |