Syria Demands US Pay for Air Strike Victims

The Permanent Mission of Syria to the United Nations announced on Friday that the US must immediately withdraw its troops from Syria and pay reparations for the deaths of dozens of people in a 2019 attack in Baghuz.

Damascus flatly dismissed a Pentagon investigation stating it was not to blame for the strike, calling its findings "an admission of failure that demands accountability."

The Pentagon claimed on Tuesday that an attack on an Islamic State (IS, previously ISIS/ISIL) encampment in Syria's Baghuz on March 18, 2019, which killed at least 70 inpiduals, did not breach the rules of engagement or the laws of war.

Only four civilians were among the 56 inpiduals killed in the 500-pound bomb blast, according to Washington's estimate. While "civilians were within the blast radius," resulting in civilian losses, the choice to drop the large bomb "demonstrated sensitivity for non-combatants," according to the study. However, it employed an Obama-era criterion that classified all slain military-age males as combatants by default in determining who was labelled a terrorist.

The Syrian mission to the United Nations dismissed the Pentagon's findings as a "clear attempt to absolve the US occupation forces in Syria of direct responsibility for civilian casualties under the pretext of fighting the terrorist organisation 'ISIS,'" and dismissed any claims that "efforts have been made to distinguish between civilians and members of 'ISIS,'" as "empty justifications" for the killing of civilians.

The mission told Newsweek on Friday that "biassed investigations cannot refute the reality that a crime against humanity has happened in Baghuz."

"Any justifications provided by the US administration for not violating the law of war or the rules of engagement are designed to obscure the fact that US forces deployed in Syria are illegal, and they launch military strikes without the approval or coordination of the Syrian Arab Republic's government under the guise of fighting terrorism."

Despite the fact that the report purports to exonerate the US military, the complete content remains classified, with just a two-page summary made available. According to the New York Times, the bomb site was swiftly flattened, and the initial internal findings were "delayed, sanitised, and classified."

The report's findings contrasted sharply with statements made by US troops on the ground at the time, with one military analyst reportedly saying, "We just dropped [the 500-pound bomb] on 50 women and children," and others asking if they had just witnessed a war crime.

While US Central Command earlier confirmed that 80 people were killed in the hit, just 16 of them were suspected ISIS militants, the military defended its actions by claiming that 60 more could have been terrorists since "women and children in the Islamic State occasionally took up arms."

The Pentagon's recent report contradicted even those watered-down findings, admitting only that “administrative deficiencies contributed to the impression that the [Department of Defense] was not treating this [civilian casualty] incident seriously, was not being transparent, and was not following its own protocols” regarding civilian casualty incidents.