Washington Post – by Thomas Gibbons-Neff
U.S.-led aircraft accidentally bombed friendly Syrian forces fighting the Islamic State in northern Syria on Tuesday, killing 18, the Pentagon said Thursday. The April 11 bombing marks the worst confirmed friendly-fire incident in the nearly three-year-old war against the terrorist group.
The U.S.-led coalition said in a statement that the airstrike was requested by “partnered forces” near the town of Tabqa who accidentally targeted a group of Kurdish and Arab fighters known as the Syrian Democratic Forces, or SDF. The partnered forces believed that the SDF’s position belonged to the Islamic State, the statement said.
“The general leadership of SDF in coordination with international coalition will investigate the reasons behind the accident in order to prevent it happening again,” the Syrian Democratic Forces General Command said in a statement.
Last month, Syrian Democratic Forces along with U.S. Special Operations forces landed behind Islamic State lines and crossed the Euphrates River in an attempt to seize the town of Tabqa, as well as its strategic dam and airfield. The SDF is composed of various entities, including the Kurdish Peoples’ Protection Units, known as the YPG, and the predominantly Arab Syrian Arab Coalition. It is unclear whether the two groups are working side by side or independently of each other.
“The Coalition is assessing the cause of the incident and will implement appropriate safeguards to prevent similar incidents in the future,” the Pentagon statement said. Multiple nations, including Belgium, Denmark and Australia, participate in the air war against the Islamic State, and it is unclear whether any country besides the United States was involved in Tuesday’s errant strike.
Before this week’s incident, U.S.-led forces had acknowledged two friendly-fire events during the war against the Islamic State. In December 2015, nine Iraqi soldiers in Fallujah were accidentally killed by U.S.-led aircraft, and in January 2016 nine Shiite militiamen fighting near Tikrit were bombed by an Iraqi drone.
Louisa Lovelock in Beirut contributed to this report.
Thank god it was an accident.
Because if it wasn’t.
I’d think someone was trying to kill innocent people.
What is an accident really …?
It’s when two stupid people finally and unknowingly craft their unconscious lives and run head first…like a head butt.
Into each other and blame the other party for being a dumbazz.
An accident, uh yeah, that’s what it was. An accident. Again. It’s not like we did this to like, allow our proxy mercenaries to regroup or stay afloat to let the situation continue or thumb our noses at our other air strikes since we’re trying to blame Assad for gassing his own people while fighting Israeli and U.S. backed terrorists or anything like that. Just another accident. That’s all it was…… again.
That is the funniest Shit I’ve seen all day…”accidently”.
Reminds me of “Why are you slapping yourself? Why are you slapping yourself?”.
With ‘allies’ like that, who needs enemies?
We are so incompetent, always “accidentally” BOMBING something or some one, another ecample….HOSPITALS!…this government thinkd WE the people are STUPID…