Collateral damage

last updated 8 January 2015

Aitha, Iraq

A U.S. F-16 dropped a 500-pound bomb on the wrong house this week, killing at least five Iraqis. Iraqi neighbors said that 14 members of the same family, including seven children, were killed. But U.S. officials said they could not confirm that count, since the brick house was leveled and the victims’ remains all but obliterated. The airstrike was intended to support troops searching for a militant leader in a town near Mosul—Iraq’s third-largest city and an insurgency hotbed. In an unusual admission, military commanders confirmed that the laser-guided bomb had gone astray. The Pentagon said it regretted the loss of “possibly innocent lives.”