The U.S. "likely" killed four civilians, including possibly a child, in a March airstrike against an Islamic State group checkpoint in Iraq, according to a U.S. Central Command report released Friday.
The strike was carried out by an A-10 attack plane on March 13 near the city of Al Hatra, located in northern Iraq about 100 miles southwest of Mosul, reports The Washington Post.
An Iraqi citizen subsequently reported that the attack destroyed her car and killed the passengers inside, which prompted the U.S. Air Force's Central Command to open an investigation on April 20.
"The preponderance of the evidence gathered during the investigation indicates that the air strike likely resulted in the deaths of four non-combatants," the military said in a rare statement Friday acknowledging the civilian deaths, reports Reuters.
"One of the non-combatants may have been a child," the statement said, however, "no positive identification can be made with reasonable certainty as to the gender or age without further forensic examination or other evidence that is not available to the coalition."
Central Command said that the strike was authorized at the Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar, but before the missile hit the checkpoint, a black Kia sedan and a GMC Suburban sports utility vehicle arrived at the target location, and the drivers talked with people at the checkpoint for about 40 minutes while other vehicles drove through, according to the Post.
An aircrew relayed that information to the Combined Air Operations Center, which manages the air operations from the Qatar base, but because the drivers of the cars were talking to people at the checkpoint for so long, U.S. supervisors concluded that the drivers were affiliated with the Islamic State group and were "therefore lawful targets," reports the Guardian.
The aircrew was apparently unaware that four "additional personnel" had been in the vehicles.
"We regret the unintentional loss of lives and keep those families in our thoughts," said Lt. Gen. CQ Brown of U.S. Air Forces Central Command, according to the Guardian. "Our goal is to defeat Daesh (ISIS), a terrorist organization that continuously wraps itself around the population, and we do everything we can to prevent unintended deaths or injuries to non-combatants."
