MONTREAL, Canada – “Indiscriminate” Iraqi air force attacks meant to wipe out Islamic State forces have killed dozens of civilians, including 24 refugee children housed at a school near Tikrit at the start of this month, according to an international rights watchdog.
“This is not an isolated incident. We have documented a pattern of indiscriminate attacks from the air in which civilians have died,” Fred Abrahams, special advisor at New York-based Human Rights Watch (HRW), told Rudaw in a phone interview.
“The death toll is high from these cases. At least 75 civilians have been killed and hundreds of others have been wounded in 17 airstrikes,” he said.
HRW has called on the Iraqi government to promptly probe a September 1 airstrike it says hit a school near Tikrit housing refugees. At least 31 civilians, including 24 children, were killed in the raid, which also wounded 41 others, according to the rights group.
The al-Alam Vocational High School was housing displaced people who fled Tikrit after the Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS) militants took control of the city in mid-June, HRW says.
“The death toll is high from these cases, at least 75 civilians have been killed and hundreds of others have been wounded in 17 airstrikes,” according to Abrahams.
HRW called for a probe a day after Iraq’s Shiite Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi ordered the army to stop shelling militant-held populated areas to minimize civilian casualties.
“Unlawful” attacks, Abrahams said, have been reported within IS-controlled areas in Fallujah, Beiji, Mosul, Tikrit, and al-Sherqat, with Sunni Iraqis the primary victims.
“The government is trying to fight ISIS but it is going to create more enemies among the Sunni population if it is not more careful and is only targeting combatants,” Abrahams said.
Abadi issued on order on September 11 to halt Iraqi air forces strikes on neighborhoods with civilian populations. But the bombings have continued in Anbar province, where a hospital was hit.
Iraqi officials have given “a very weak explanation” for the questioned air attacks, Abrahams said. He added that, while subsequent airstrikes have not been investigated yet, they are “definitely concerning.”
Iraq’s government has told HRW that the explosion that hit the school was from a vehicle nearby that was transporting militants. The strike on the vehicle caused an explosion that was “far larger than normal,” the government said, because of the explosives the car was apparently carrying.
“All of the witnesses we’ve interviewed, people in the school and in the neighborhood, nobody spoke about a car and actually the witnesses said the missile hit in the middle of the courtyard, not on the outside where there was any car,” Abrahams said.
The civilian casualties by the Iraqi air strikes reveal “a level of unprofessionalism that puts civilians in danger,” Abrahams said. He added that orders to shoot, when it was unclear whether the targets were military or civilian, was “unacceptable.”
HRW has called on all governments supporting the campaign against IS to pressure the Iraqi government to follow the rules of war.
“We have unconfirmed reports of some civilian casualties in Syria, from US airstrikes,” Abrahams said, adding that those are being investigated.
American strikes in Iraq over the past month successfully targeted individual IS targets, patrol boats and trucks. On Tuesday, the United States and its allies launched the first rounds of airstrikes against Sunni militants in Syria. Several allies have signed up to the US-led air raids.
