Conflicting accounts emerged on Sunday about an explosion in Mosul, Iraq, a week after a US-led coalition strike against the Islamic State group that local officials say collapsed buildings, killing and burying many people.
The Iraqi military said 61 bodies had been recovered from a destroyed building that the Islamic State (IS) group had booby-trapped in west Mosul, but that there was no sign the building had been hit by a coalition airstrike.
The military statement differed from reports by witnesses and local officials that said many more bodies were pulled from the building after a coalition strike targeted IS militants and equipment in al-Jadida District.
Photo: Reuters
A Nineveh Province health official on Sunday said that 160 bodies had been officially buried after they were recovered from the site where eyewitnesses said buildings had been flattened by the March 17 blast.
“Six alleyways of the neighborhood were completely destroyed,” said the official, who asked not to be named for security reasons. “Civil defense has extracted and buried 160 bodies up to this moment.”
What happened on March 17 remains unclear and details are difficult to confirm as Iraqi forces battle with Islamic State militants to recapture the densely populated parts of the western half of Mosul, the group’s last stronghold in Iraq.
Eyewitnesses on Sunday described horrific scenes from the blast, with body parts strewn over rubble, residents trying desperately to pull out survivors and other people buried out of reach.
“We felt the earth shaking as if it was an earthquake. It was an airstrike that targeted my street. Dust, shattered glass and powder were the only things my wife, myself and three kids were feeling,” one al-Jadida resident, Abu Ayman, said. “We heard screams and loud crying coming from the house next door. After the bombing stopped, I went out with some neighbors and found that some houses on my street were leveled.”
As combat continues, the al-Jadida incident highlights the complexity of the fighting in west Mosul, where militants hide among families, using them as shields and putting at risk as many as half-a-million people still caught in Islamic State-held areas.
Iraqi forces hit militant positions on Sunday with helicopter strikes and exchanged heavy gun and rocket fire around al-Nuri mosque in west Mosul, where the Islamic State group leader declared his caliphate nearly three years ago.
At the north edge of Mosul, Iraqi army divisions raided and entered the Badush cement factory, to where militants had retreated, Lieutenant Colonel Ali Jassem of the 9th armored division said.
Army units are clearing villages to the north.
Thousands of people have already fled Mosul and coalition officials and Iraq’s Shiite-led government are wary of incidents that could alienate residents of the mainly Sunni city and fuel the kind of sectarian tensions that helped the Islamic State group’s rise.
The US-led coalition backing Iraqi forces on Saturday said it carried out a strike on Islamic State militants and equipment in the area of the reported deaths and was investigating. It did not give figures for any casualties or details of targets.
US Air Force Brigadier General Matthew Isler, a deputy commanding general for the coalition, on Sunday said it took “every feasible measure to protect civilians” and was investigating all “credible allegations.”
The Iraqi military command said witnesses had told troops that the building was booby-trapped and militants had forced residents inside basements to use them as shields.
Islamic State militants had also fired on troops from houses, it said.
“A team of military experts from field commanders checked the building where the media reported that the house was completely destroyed. All walls were booby-trapped and there is no hole that indicates an airstrike,” it said.
“Sixty-one bodies were evacuated,” the statement said.
A coalition airstrike had hit the area at the time though there was no sign it struck that building, it said.
The military’s casualty figure was much lower than that given by local officials.
A municipal official had said on Saturday that 240 bodies had been pulled from the rubble.
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