United States Secretary of Defense, Lloyd Austin, has ordered a review into the United States military bombings in Syria during March 2019.
Earlier this month, the US military acknowledged that civilians “may have been killed in the bombings in Baghouz, near the Iraqi border in 2019” after the New York Times citied anonymous sources and classified documents accusing the US military of concealing the bombings.
The newspaper reported that the bombing struck a “crowd of women and children”, killing 64 people.
Pentagon Press Secretary, John Kirby, said the review would look into “record keeping and reporting procedures'' and “whether mitigation measures identified in previous investigations into the incident were in fact implemented effectively.”
Rights groups have previously accused the US-led coalition of killing civilians during their bombing campaign. The investigation, due next year, will also assess whether “accountability measures'' would be appropriate.