“The coalition uses only precision weapons systems when we conduct any kind of targeting of ISIS forces inside of Mosul. This is the most accurate air campaign in the history of warfare,” Col. Ryan Dillon told Rudaw TV on Sunday.
“That said, we know the tactics that ISIS uses,” he continued, noting the extremist group’s use of human shields.
The coalition is under increasing pressure to account for what are seen as rising civilian casualties in the war against ISIS.
In March, an airstrike resulted in the death of 105 civilians, the coalition acknowledged. It, however, said that secondary explosions from ISIS munitions caused the majority of the destruction of the home where more than 100 civilians were gathered.
According to the coalition’s most recent report on civilian casualty figures, at least 484 civilians have been “unintentionally killed” in coalition airstrikes in both Syria and Iraq since the start of the anti-ISIS campaign.
Conflict monitor Airwars puts the civilian casualty figure to be more than seven times that. The group states that a minimum of 3,817 civilians have been killed by coalition airstrikes.
Responding to concerns that white phosphorus had been used over western Mosul on Saturday, Dillon confirmed an earlier statement made by the Iraqi army.
“The coalition in coordination with the Iraqi Security Forces used smoke to obscure the movement of civilians that were trying to get out of Mosul,” he said.
This was done to obstruct the vision of ISIS snipers in al-Jamhouri hospital, he explained, adding that the mission was successful.
“We use smoke as an obscuration for our purposes. We will not say whether or not we used this particular weapon, but we used a smoke to obscure the movement of civilians out of there.”
Iraqi Security Forces are engaged in a fierce fight with ISIS in their last defence in western Mosul. “We have about 5 square kilometres to go,” Dillon estimated.
Within the last neighbourhoods ISIS is holding onto is the symbolic al-Nuri mosque where Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi declared his caliphate nearly three years ago.
In Raqqa, the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) continue to isolate the city and “have closed to within three kilometres of the city in the north, in the east, and about five kilometres from the city centre to the west,” Dillon said.
The coalition will continue to support the SDF when they announce their transition from the isolation phase to the liberation of the city.
