Baghuz Strike: US Bombs Hit a Crowd of Mostly Women and Children in Syria; Military Hid It for Over Two Years (March 2019)

What Happened

In March 2019 US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces had cornered the last Islamic State (ISIS) fighters, together with their families, in an encampment at Baghuz on the Euphrates. On 18 March, according to The New York Times' later investigation, a US F-15E attack jet "streaked across the drone's high-definition field of vision and dropped a 227kg (500lb) bomb on the crowd" gathered by a sheltered river bank. As "a few people stumbled away in search of cover", a jet tracking them dropped 2,000-pound bombs. The attack took 12 minutes (Irish Times, republishing the NYT).

Coalition drones "had scoured the camp 24 hours a day for weeks and knew nearly every inch, officers said, including the daily movements of groups of women and children who gathered to eat, pray and sleep" (Irish Times). Analysts watching the drone feed typed: "Who dropped that?" and "We just dropped on 50 women and children" (The Intercept, citing the Times).

An initial battle damage assessment found about 70 dead. The strike log classified the strike as self-defence; the Times reported that the task force interpreted the rules of engagement broadly (Irish Times).

The concealment

Lt. Col. Dean Korsak, an Air Force lawyer, believed he had witnessed possible war crimes and later emailed the Senate Armed Services Committee about it. An evaluator in the Defense Department inspector general's office found the allegation "extremely credible". The inspector general's report was stalled and stripped of any mention of the strike. Satellite images taken four days after the strike show the area appeared to have been bulldozed. The strike was not publicly acknowledged until the Times began asking about it (Irish Times). The Intercept reported that the bombing "came to light only after investigations, including by the independent inspector general and the Air Force Office of Special Investigations, had been blocked or buried."

The military's response

After the Times' inquiry in November 2021, Central Command acknowledged that 80 people were killed but said the strikes were justified: the bombs killed 16 fighters and four civilians, and it was unclear whether the other 60 were civilians (Irish Times). On 29 November 2021 Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin ordered Gen. Michael Garrett, head of Army Forces Command, to review "the civilians killed, the compliance of the law of war and record keeping" within 90 days (Jerusalem Post/Reuters). The review, announced in May 2022, found that troops "did not violate the laws of war or deliberately cause civilian casualties"; the Pentagon said 52 combatants and four civilians were killed and 15 civilians wounded. Gen. Garrett found the ground commander had relied "through no fault of his own" on data that was not fully accurate (BBC).

Legal Analysis

Armed conflict. The campaign against ISIS in Syria was a non-international armed conflict, and the rules of distinction, proportionality and precautions apply.

Civilian status (contested). The people hit were in an ISIS encampment that held fighters and their families. The Times reported that up to 64 of the dead were women and children, and drone analysts saw women and children. The military says most were fighters. Family members of fighters are civilians unless they take a direct part in hostilities.

The attack (credibly alleged). If those who called in the strike knew, from weeks of drone surveillance, that the crowd was mostly women and children, a strike on it would be an attack directed against civilians (Art. 8(2)(e)(i)), or at least an indiscriminate or disproportionate attack under customary law. The follow-on bombs on people stumbling away sharpen the question. An Air Force lawyer who watched the strike thought it a possible war crime, and a Pentagon evaluator found that allegation "extremely credible".

Knowledge (not established). The crucial element, whether those who ordered the strike knew the crowd was overwhelmingly civilian, has not been found by any independent body. The military's own review, as reported, found no violation. Analysts' contemporaneous messages point the other way, but the full targeting record has not been made public.

Duty to investigate. Separately, customary international humanitarian law obliges states to investigate alleged war crimes by their forces and, where appropriate, prosecute. Bulldozing the site, omitting the strike from public reporting, and stalling the inspector general's inquiry are documented failures of that duty, whatever the lawfulness of the strike itself.

Strongest defence argument. The strike log classified the strike as self-defence, and the military's position is that it was directed at fighters mixed in with families. In the last pocket of a fighting force known to use human shields, distinguishing fighters from civilians is genuinely hard, and the military review found the strike lawful. The argument is weakened by the weeks of persistent surveillance, the analysts' immediate reaction and the follow-up bombs. It is weakened further by the concealment: a force confident in a lawful strike does not usually hide it.

Jurisdiction. Syria and the US are not Rome Statute parties.

Why This Grade

This entry is graded severe with a war-crime classification of potential.

• Credible, detailed reporting, an Air Force lawyer's contemporaneous report and a Pentagon evaluator's "extremely credible" assessment give a reasonable basis to suspect a war crime. That is the "potential" threshold.
• The element of knowledge that the crowd was civilian has not been established to the reasonable-grounds standard, and the only formal review reportedly found no violation. It is therefore not graded extreme.
• The harm, dozens of people killed, probably mostly women and children, is concrete, and the documented concealment compounds it. That supports severe. An argument for critical, based on the obstruction of accountability, is noted; the entry stays at severe because its core is the killing itself.

Confidence in this grade: medium.