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MOSUL, Iraq A sharp rise in the number of civilians reported killed in U.S.-led airstrikes in Iraq and Syria is spreading panic, deepening mistrust and triggering accusations that the United States and its partners may be acting without sufficient regard for lives of noncombatants.

The increase comes as local ground forces backed by air support from a U.S.-led coalition close in on the Islamic States two main urban bastions Raqqa in Syria and Mosul in Iraq.

In front-line neighborhoods in western Mosul, families described cowering in basements for weeks as bombs rained down around them and the Islamic State battled from their rooftops. Across the border in Raqqa, residents desperately trying to flee before an offensive begins are being blocked by the militants, who frequently use civilians as human shields.

Throughout his election campaign, President Trump pledged to target Islamic State militants more aggressively, criticizing the U.S. air campaign for being too gentle and asking for a reassessment of battlefield rules. The United States has denied there has been any shift and defended the conduct of its campaign.

But figures compiled by monitoring organizations and interviews with residents paint an increasingly bloody picture, with the number of casualties in March already surpassing records for a single month.

[Mosul residents say U.S.-led coalition airstrikes killed scores of people]

The worst alleged attack was in Mosul, where rescue teams are still digging out bodies after what residents describe as a hellish onslaught in the Mosul al-Jadida neighborhood during the battle to retake it two weeks ago. Iraqi officials and residents say as many as 200 died in U.S.-led strikes, with more than 100 bodies recovered from a single building. The wooden carts that residents use to carry vegetables and other wares in the once busy market area instead ferried out cadavers recovered from the rubble last week.

The U.S.-led coalition, which has acknowledged carrying out a strike against militants in the area, says it is investigating the reports. If we did it, and Id say theres at least a fair chance that we did, it was an unintentional accident of war, Lt. Gen. Stephen Townsend, the top U.S. commander for Iraq and Syria, said Tuesday at the Pentagon.

Amnesty International on Tuesday said the coalition was not taking sufficient precautions to prevent civilian deaths in Mosul, in a flagrant violation of international humanitarian law.

It was just one of numerous incidents across Iraq and Syria in recent weeks that have raised concerns that the United States has flouted rules requiring it to protect civilians. In both countries, politicians and activists say the high numbers of deaths are spreading alarm among civilians and sowing distrust of the U.S.-backed campaign advancing toward their homes.

People used to feel safe when the American planes were in the sky, because they knew they didnt hit civilians, said Hussam Essa, a founder of Raqqa is Being Slaughtered Silently, which monitors violence in Raqqa province. They were only afraid of the Russian and regime planes. But now they are very afraid of the American airstrikes. American planes are targeting everywhere, he said.

According to the U.K.-based organization Airwars, which tracks allegations of civilian deaths in airstrikes, out of 1,257 claims of deaths in U.S.-led coalition airstrikes this month, a record 337 have been assessed as being fair, meaning that there is a reasonable level of public reporting of the alleged incident from two or more generally credible sources and that strikes have been confirmed in the vicinity on the day in question.

[Airstrike monitoring group overwhelmed by claims of civilian casualties]

The scale of the destruction is huge, and we are reeling from the number of alleged cases, not just in Mosul but in Raqqa, too, said Chris Woods, the director of Airwars. Casualty numbers from western Mosul are absolutely shocking. In Syria its a car here, a family there. It happens every day.

The group said in a statement last week that it had stopped monitoring Russian strikes in Syria, in order to focus on accusations linked to the U.S.-led coalition, saying its organization is overwhelmed. In the first two months of the year, U.S. strikes were responsible for more civilian casualties than Russian strikes for the first time since Russia intervened in Syrias civil war in 2015, according to Airwars figures. Russian strikes are now climbing again as a partial cease-fire collapses.

Woods said the intensification began during the Obama administration but escalated under Trump. In December, the U.S.-led coalition delegated approval to battlefield commanders in Mosul, speeding up the responsiveness of strikes after a tough battle for the eastern part of the city. The coalition says strikes are subject to the same scrutiny.

The death of innocent civilians in war is a terrible tragedy that weighs heavily on all of us, said Col. Joseph Scrocca, a spokesman for the U.S. military in Baghdad, adding that the United States works within the laws of armed conflict. We set the highest standards for protecting civilians, and our dedication, diligence and discipline in prosecuting our combat operations, while protecting civilians, is without precedence in the history of warfare.

The escalation of U.S. strikes around the city of Raqqa occurred in February as the United States intensified efforts to train and equip a Syrian force in preparation for an offensive against the city, expected to begin in the coming months.

[On the front lines of the fight for the Islamic States capital of Raqqa]

In March, the tempo increased further, with more sites being targeted that have no obvious military value, according to a Syrian living in Turkey who is from Raqqa and is in regular contact with his family and friends who are still there. They are hitting everything that isnt a small house, including the barges that ferry passengers across the river dividing the city now that the bridges have been disabled, he said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of concern for his family.

Among the bigger incidents was a strike last week on a school sheltering displaced people in the town of Mansoura, outside Raqqa, that killed at least 30 people, according to monitoring groups. An attack on a mosque in western Aleppo that the U.S. military said was aimed at known al-Qaeda operatives also appears to have killed dozens of people attending prayers, according to witness accounts and monitoring groups.

The U.S. military said after the Aleppo strike that it had hit a gathering of militants near a mosque but denied striking the mosque itself. The military is conducting an investigation into the incident.

Townsend said the initial indications were that the school strike was clean and did not kill civilians.

A wave of continued attacks in the past week in the small town of Tabqa has added to a record toll of 101 civilians killed by U.S. strikes from the beginning of the month to March 21, Essa said. He provided the names of 41 people alleged to have been killed in a three-day period last week in strikes that hit a bakery, a carwash, a slaughterhouse and other targets.

In Iraq and Syria, residents and activists say there has also been a discernible shift in the kinds of targets being hit with infrastructure such as hospitals and schools coming under fire. The U.S.-led coalition contends that militants are increasingly using such protected buildings as bases for attack, knowing that there are restrictions on bombing them under U.S. rules of engagement.

Tabqa is a crucial step on the path to Raqqa, and it is the current focus of the battle. Reports that the Tabqa dam have also been hit by airstrikes during the fighting have further contributed to the sense of panic after the Islamic State issued a warning on Sunday that the dam could burst.

Townsend said the United States had not been targeting the Tabqa dam and had been using non-cratering munitions in that area to protect the site.

Downstream from the dam, residents are terrified by the intensified bombing and of the risk of a dam breach, the Syrian said. His family is desperate to escape, but the Islamic State has erected checkpoints to prevent people from fleeing. People dont know what to do, he said.

In Iraq, too, civilians are trapped as Iraqi forces push into the most densely packed areas of Mosul, including the Old City, where an estimated 400,000 people are trapped in old structures on narrow streets.

The United Nations said Tuesday that at least 307 civilians were killed in western Mosul between Feb.17 and March 22, warning Iraqi security forces and the coalition to avoid falling into the Islamic States trap as the group deliberately puts civilians in danger.

With a large amount of artillery and ordnance being fired into the city, though, it is hard to ascertain which deaths the coalition is responsible for, Woods said. Iraqi commanders, who call in airstrikes from the U.S.-led coalition, say its difficult for them to know whether civilians are in houses when many are stuck inside for weeks at a time and it is not possible to see them through drone surveillance.

Lt. Gen. Abdul Ghani al-Asadi, commander of Iraqs counterterrorism units, said the troops are instead relying on tips from those fleeing as to which houses have civilians inside.

Still, Mosul Eye, a monitoring group in the city, said it had warned Iraqi forces that civilians were trapped in homes in Mosul al-Jadida days before the U.S. strike there and sent coordinates.

Amnesty International said that because the government has told residents to stay in their homes, the U.S.-led coalition should have known that strikes would be likely to result in significant numbers of civilian casualties.

For civilians, many of whom are trapped, the situation is dire.

Nour Mohammeds family of 23 people hid in a basement in western Mosul for nearly two weeks as explosions rang out around them.

Islamic State militants forced the family to keep the front door open so that they could move in and out of the building freely and fend off the advancing Iraqi forces from the roof.

We were terrified every time wed hear the sound of an airplane that theyd bomb us all, she said as she fled the city last week.

Sly reported from Beirut. Mustafa Salim in Mosul and Missy Ryan in Washington contributed to this report.

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Panic spreads in Iraq, Syria as record numbers of civilians ...

"We're doing very well in Iraq," Trump said at a reception for all US senators and their spouses in the White House East Room, adding he'd just ended a long phone call with Defense Secretary James Mattis before appearing at the event.

Trump added that "our soldiers are fighting like never before" in Iraq, and praised what he characterized as a positive trajectory in the country.

During the Iraq War, which began in 2003, US troops engaged in extended fighting across the country, battling an insurgency and later sectarian violence to secure areas in key cities and regions.

Though troops currently in Iraq aren't officially carrying out a combat mission, they do face danger and limited engagement with enemy forces, particularly as they move closer to the front lines in Mosul, the northern city that Iraqi forces are working to liberate from ISIS.

The President didn't acknowledge those deaths in his remarks, instead praising the work of the US military in Iraq.

"The results are very, very good," Trump said. "I just wanted to let everyone know."

Continued here:
Trump: US troops fighting 'like never before' in Iraq ...

The U.S. military is sending an additional two companies of soldiers to Iraq to help Iraqi troops fighting to retake Mosul from ISIS, defense officials confirmed to ABC News.

Two companies of soldiers is equal to between 200 to 300 soldiers.

Additional members of the 82nd Airborne Division's second combat brigade are deploying to Iraq on a temporary mission to provide additional "advise and assist" support to Iraqi forces, Colonel Joseph Scrocca, a spokesman for Operation Inherent Resolve told ABC News.

"This is not a new capability," said Scrocca. "It provides more advise and assist assets to our Iraqi partners."

This unit of the 82nd Airborne already has 1,700 soldiers in Iraq and Kuwait helping with the advise and assist mission for Iraqi troops.

"The number of soldiers does not equate to the remainder of the brigade as had previously been surmised," said Scrocca. News reports in recent weeks had said the Pentagon was considering sending possibly as many as 1,000 additional members from the brigade for the advise and assist mission in Mosul.

The authorized troop cap for Iraq is 5,262 though the real number is probably 6,000 with the presence of additional troops on temporary assignment. These new troops wont count towards the cap because theyre on temporary assignment.

In mid-February the Iraqi military began a final push to retake western Mosul from ISIS after having seized the eastern half of the city in a fierce 100-day battle that began in October. Iraqi troops are now facing stiff resistance from ISIS fighters as they fight through the tight quarters of the older western half of the city.

In Syria there are currently about 900 U.S. forces advising and assisting the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) fighting ISIS, even though the authorized troop level is 503.

The higher number is due to the recent addition of a Marine artillery unit helping with the SDF's offensive outside of Raqqa and a small complement of Army Rangers sent to the city of Manbij to ensure that Turkish-backed forces and SDF forces do not fight each other.

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200 more US troops headed to Iraq to advise and assist ...

The Pentagon on Friday acknowledged that the U.S.-led coalition fighting the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria carried out an airstrike in a western Mosul neighborhood and that it is looking into reports that the bombing left more than 100 civilians dead.

We are aware of reports on airstrikes in Mosul resulting in civilian casualties, Eric Pahon, a Pentagon spokesman, said in a statement to Fox News. The Coalition conducted several strikes near Mosul and [coalition forces are] looking in to these reports.The Department of Defense takes all reports of civilian casualties very seriously and assesses all incidents as thoroughly as possible.

The suspected civilian body count underscores the problems that Iraqi troops face in their weeks-long campaign to drive out the Sunni militant group from the densely urban part of Iraq's second-largest city.

Residents of the neighborhood where the airstrike occurred, known as Mosul Jidideh, told a team of Associated Press reporters at the scene that scores of residents are believed to have been killed by a pair of airstrikes that hit a cluster of homes in the area earlier this month.

"Over 137 people were inside. The entire neighborhood was fleeing because of missiles that hit, so people were taking refuge here," said Ahmed Ahmed, one of the residents of the neighborhood.

One airstrike hit the residential area on March 13, followed by a second strike four days later, the residents said.

The Department of Defense takes all reports of civilian casualties very seriously and assesses all incidents as thoroughly as possible.

- Eric Pahon, a Pentagon spokesman

Faced with their most difficult fight yet against ISIS, Iraqi and the U.S.-led coalition forces have increasingly turned to airstrikes and artillery to clear and hold territory in Iraq.

As of March 14 of this year, the U.S. alone has carried out over 7,700 airstrikes in Iraq-- many centered around the ISIS stronghold in Mosul while coalition forces have conducted an additional 3,634 airstrikes in the war-plagued Middle Eastern nation. The military intervention against ISIS dubbed Operation Inherent Resolve has involved almost 19,000 airstrikes in Syria and Iraq since 2014.

The Pentagons announcement on Friday comes two days after it reported it was investigating claims that a U.S. military airstrike recently hit a school in northern Syria and allegedly killed dozens of civilians. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based monitoring group, said that at least 33 bodies were pulled from the rubble at the school, which had housed at least 50 families fleeing violence elsewhere in the war-torn nation.

Dozens of civilians were also purportedly killed last week when a strike on an al-Qaida target blasted a prayer hall in the town of Jinah, in Syrias Aleppo province. While the Pentagon, which opened an investigation into the bombing, said that numerous al-Qaida fighters were killed in the strike, local residents claim the dead were civilians who had gathered for a religious class.

The Pentagon, which has yet to release casualty figures from last month's fighting, has acknowledged 220 civilian deaths from coalition airstrikes in Iraq and Syria since its campaign against ISIS began in 2014. Independent monitoring groups, such as the London-based Airwars, put the casualty figures much higher, at just over 2,700 killed by coalition strikes since 2014.

The U.S. is conducting strikes on IS daily from bases in Jordan, Turkey and elsewhere in the region. U.S. military commanders have also raised the prospect of sending additional forces into the region to be ready to assist in accelerating the fight in either Syria or Iraq.

Fox News' Lucas Tomlinson and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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Pentagon investigating report that US-led airstrike killed ...

Resident of Mosul Jadida retrieve bodies from the rubble following the coalition airstrikes. Photograph: Felipe Dana/AP

Iraqi military leaders have halted their push to recapture west Mosul from Islamic State as international outrage grew over the civilian toll from airstrikes that killed at least 150 people in a single district of the city.

The attack on the Mosul Jadida neighbourhood is thought to have been one of the deadliest bombing raids for civilians since the US invasion of Iraq in 2003. Rescuers were still pulling bodies from the rubble on Saturday, more than a week after the bombs landed, when the US-led coalition confirmed that its aircraft had targeted Isis fighters in the area.

They carried out the attack on 17 March at the request of the Iraqi security forces, and have now launched a formal investigation into reports of civilian casualties, the coalition said.

British planes were among those operating in western Mosul at the time. Asked if they could have been involved in the airstrikes, a spokesman did not rule out the possibility of British involvement, saying: We are aware of reports [of civilian casualties] and will support the coalition investigation.

There had been no reports of a UK role in any civilian casualties in more than two years of fighting Isis, he added. We have not seen evidence that we have been responsible for civilian casualties so far. Through our rigorous targeting processes we will continue to seek to minimise the risk of civilian casualties, but that risk can never be removed entirely.

A UK report on the 17 March fighting, which was issued just a couple of days later, described very challenging conditions with heavy cloud. Tornado jets were sent to support Iraqi troops advancing inside western Mosul in intense urban fighting, where crews had to engage targets perilously close to the Iraqi troops whom they were assisting. They used Paveway guided missiles to hit five targets. The coalition said in a separate statement it had carried out four airstrikes aimed at three Isis tactical units. They destroyed more than 50 vehicles and 25 fighting positions.

The deaths have intensified concerns over up to 400,000 Mosul residents who are still packed into the crowded western half of the city, as Iraqi security forces backed by foreign air power advance on Isiss last major stronghold in the country.

Civil defence workers say they have pulled more than 140 bodies from the ruins of three buildings in Mosul Jadida and believe that dozens more remain under the rubble of one building, a large home with a once cavernous basement, in which up to 100 people had hidden last Friday morning.

Local people at the site told the Observer that the enormous damage inflicted on the homes and much of the surrounding area had been caused by airstrikes, which battered the neighbourhood in the middle of a pitched battle with Isis members, who were under attack from Iraqi forces.

The UNs humanitarian coordinator in Iraq, Lise Grande, said: We are stunned by this terrible loss of life.

Chris Woods, director of monitoring group Airwars, said: The Jadida incident alone is the worst toll of a single [airstrike] incident that I can recall in decades. The coalitions argument that it doesnt target noncombatants risks being devalued when so many civilians are being killed in west Mosul.

He warned that the deaths, and other recent attacks in Syria that have claimed dozens of lives, risked turning public sentiment against the coalition. We have until recently always credited the coalition for taking care to avoid civilian casualties, compared with the Russians. But since the last months of 2016 you have seen this steep climb in civilian casualties and public sentiment has turned very sharply against the US-led coalition.

As the scale of the disaster became apparent, Iraqi military sources confirmed that they had been ordered not to launch new operations.

The Australian defence force issued a statement on Sunday in response to questions about its involvement. While there are no specific allegations against Australian aircraft, Australia will fully support the coalition-led (Operation Inherent Resolve) investigation into these allegations.

Mosul Jadida residents said three homes had taken direct hits from airstrikes and others had been damaged by debris and shelling. They started in the morning and they continued till around 2pm, said Mustafa Yeheya. There were Isis on the roof of several of the buildings and they were in the streets fighting. But the strange thing is that the house they were hiding in, their military room, was not even hit. None of their bases was.

Journalists were banned from entering west Mosul on Saturday and Iraqi commanders could not be contacted. Iraqi and US forces have previously said that Isis deliberately blended among the civilian population and, in some cases, fighters were posted near civilian targets in a bid to increase casualties and slow the offensive against them.

A United States Central Command statement said: Our goal has always been for zero civilian casualties, but the coalition will not abandon our commitment to our Iraqi partners because of Isiss inhuman tactics terrorising civilians, using human shields and fighting from protected sites such as schools, hospitals, religious sites and civilian neighbourhoods.

Muawiya Ismael, who said he had lost six members of his clan in the attack, said: It is true that this was a battle zone and that Isis were here. They had about 15 people in the area, and they were in high positions. But they did not have heavy guns. Nothing that should justify an attack of this scale. It was not in proportion to the threat and soldiers could have fixed this.

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Iraq suspends Mosul offensive after coalition airstrike ...