Survivors cast doubt on US attack claims

Airstrikes killed 1254 people in western Mosul in March and April alone, according to Iraq Body Count. Photo / AP

After an American airstrike killed more than 100 Iraqi civilians in a house in the western part of Mosul in March, United States officials suggested Isis (Islamic State) was to blame for the horrific toll, saying militants may had crammed the building with people, booby-trapped it with explosives, then lured in an airstrike by firing from the roof.

None of that happened, survivors and witnesses told the Associated Press, recounting the deadliest single incident in the months-long battle for the Iraqi city.

"Armed men in the house I was in? Never," said Ali Zanoun, one of only two people in the building to survive the March 17 strike. He spent five days buried under the rubble of the building, drinking from a bottle of nose drops, with the bodies of more than 20 members of his family in the wreckage around him.

Instead, Zanoun and others interviewed by the AP described a horrifying battlefield where airstrikes and artillery pounded neighbourhoods of western Mosul relentlessly trying to root out Isis militants, levelling hundreds of buildings, many with civilians inside, despite the constant flight of surveillance drones overhead.

Displaced families scurried from house to house, most driven out of their homes by Isis militants, who herded residents at gunpoint out of neighbourhoods about to fall to Iraqi forces and pushed them into Isis-held areas.

US Central Command refused to comment on the March 17 strike until its investigation is finished and released.

The AP spoke to seven witnesses, including neighbours and people who had been in the house, all of whom said no one was forced into the building, where dozens had taken refuge, thinking it would be safe amid the fighting raging around them.

It was not on a main road and it was only two stories tall, making it unlikely Isis militants would use it as a sniper's position that might be targeted by an airstrike.

And, they said, the militants did not rig the building with explosives.

The building's owner, Tayseer Abu Tawfiq, was a businessman well known for his generosity around his neighbourhood, known as New Mosul.

Whoever showed up, he squeezed into his house, alongside his own 14-member family - well over 100 people. A pregnant woman taking refuge there gave birth on March 15.

The next evening, Abu Tawfiq's neighbour spoke to him and told him it wasn't safe having so many inside.

"I can't turn people away," Abu Tawfiq replied, according to the neighbour, Abdullah Khalil Ibrahim.

Hours later, the house became a death trap.

Increased use of bombardment has made the fight for Mosul's western sector, which began in mid-February, dramatically more destructive than fighting for its eastern half.

More than 1590 residential buildings have been destroyed in western Mosul, based on analysis of satellite imagery and information from local researchers, the UN said last week.

Airstrikes killed 1254 people in western Mosul in March and April alone, according to Iraq Body Count, an independent group documenting casualties in the war, cross-checking media reports with information from hospitals, officials and other sources.

In comparison, an estimated 1600 civilians were killed or wounded from all causes during the 100-day campaign to recapture Mosul's less densely populated eastern half, which ended in mid-January.

Official figures from the Pentagon, which is slower in confirming deaths, are far lower: it said over the weekend that it has confirmed coalition airstrikes killed at least 352 civilians in Iraq and Syria combined since the campaign against Isis started in 2014.

Human rights groups have pointed to looser rules introduced by the US military in December that allow commanders on the ground to call in airstrikes, eliminating a layer of vetting of the targets by officers in Baghdad intended to limit civilian deaths.

The US military says the rule change has not played a role in greater civilian casualties and that the forces adhere to the same standards for carrying out a strike.