US general blames human error for deadly Syria strike

By Kasim Ileri

WASHINGTON (AA) – A U.S. general on Tuesday blamed human error for an airstrike by American troops in Syria that killed dozens of regime fighters.

“In this incident, ultimately we made an unintentional, regrettable error primarily based on human factor in several areas in targeting process,” Air Force General Richard Coe told reporters in the Pentagon via a telephone conference as he outlined a revealing report on the incident.

Coe said the September strike in Deir Ez-Zour, which deepened tensions in the war-torn country and led to the breakdown of a sorely needed humanitarian aid cease-fire, was the product of oversight on multiple occasions.

Officers first launched a long-term “deliberate targeting” of a vehicle thought to belong to Daesh fighters as it traveled through areas controlled by the extremist group for two days.

But the operation then took a turn and began employing “dynamic targeting” when the vehicle entered a camp, with the difference being that the latter is more ad hoc and can be implemented on short notice, the general explained.

Coe said U.S. intelligence surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) aircraft monitored the camp before the strike, reporting that the fighters “were not wearing recognizable uniforms. They had no unit flag no signer or marking that we could observe.

“In many ways, it looked and acted like the forces that the coalition has been targeting for past two years,” he said.

One unnamed intelligence analyst disagreed with this assumption, Coe said, but the analysis was “not pushed to a larger group nor to the final decision makers” in time.

Moreover, the U.S.-led anti-Daesh coalition’s Combined Air Operation Center used its Russia hotline for the first time to declare the upcoming operation but provided a location that was “unintentionally erroneous” by nearly 20 kilometers (12 miles), Coe said.

After the airstrike was initiated, Russian officers called back to tell the center that the area targeted by the coalition aircraft was actually a camp that housed Syrian regime troops, Coe said.

But the call remained on hold for nearly half an hour because the operator was not present to pick it up, the general said.

“Without that call from the Russians the strike would have continued longer than they did,” Coe added, while evading the issue of how an emergency hotline call from Russians could be put on hold for so long.

The full report on the incident remains classified.

Shortly after reports of the strike emerged, the Syrian regime announced 62 troops were killed, while Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a London-based activist group, put the death toll at 85.