US official says there's a 'fair chance' airstrike killed civilians in Mosul

The top US commander in Iraq said "there's a fair chance" that a US airstrike in west Mosul killed civilians on March 17.

"We have an investigation going on, but our initial assessment ... shows we did strike in that area, there were multiple strikes in that area, so is it possible that we did that? Yes, I think it is possible," Lt. Gen. Stephen Townsend told reporters Tuesday.

"Because we struck in that area, I think there's a fair chance that we did it."

Mosul: 112 civilian bodies pulled from site of coalition airstrike

Townsend, commander of Combined Joint Task Force Operation Inherent Resolve, said the US has sent experts to the scene of the airstrike in west Mosul to investigate allegations of civilian casualties.

He said investigators are assessing whether ISIS was fighting from the building with civilians in order to "lure" the US "deliberately, or they were just using them as human shields to try to protect their fighting position."

"We know ISIS were fighting from that position in that building. And there were people that you really can't account for in any other way why they would all be there unless they were forced there. So that's my initial impression, the enemy had a hand in this, and there's also a fair chance our strike had some role in it," Townsend said.

Photos: Gathering the dead after airstrikes in Mosul

A man covers his face from the smell of corpses in the al Jadidah neighborhood of Mosul on March 24, 2017.

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Photos: Gathering the dead after airstrikes in Mosul

Residents pile body bags into the back of a pickup truck after recovering them from the rubble in the al Jadidah neighborhood of Mosul.

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Photos: Gathering the dead after airstrikes in Mosul

Residents help Iraqi civil defense force members recover corpses trapped in the rubble of a home destroyed by reported coalition airstrikes in the al Jadidah neighborhood of Mosul on March 24, 2017.

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Photos: Gathering the dead after airstrikes in Mosul

Local volunteers carry the bodies of civilians found in the rubble of a building in the al Jadidah neighborhood of Mosul.

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Photos: Gathering the dead after airstrikes in Mosul

An Iraqi rescue worker gestures towards bodies wrapped in plastic in the al Jadidah area on March 26, 2017, following airstrikes in which civilians were reportedly killed.

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Photos: Gathering the dead after airstrikes in Mosul

Residents of Mosul, Iraq, remove the bodies of Iraqis who were killed in an airstrike targeting the Islamic State (ISIS) on March 17, 2017. Iraq is investigating airstrikes in west Mosul that reportedly killed large numbers of civilians in recent days, a military spokesman said.