LONDON (Arab News) – An Iraqi man who says 35 members of his family were killed in an airstrike by the Australian troops in Mosul in 2017 will not receive compensation.
The man, who lives in Iraq and remains unnamed, applied for a “grace payment” from the Australian government, requesting a settlement in the low hundreds of thousands of Australian dollars.
The Iraqi man’s case was rejected in December 2021 despite the person who handled the claim not being given access to an Australian Defense Forces file on the incident, but accepting its advice that there was not enough proof to confirm that civilians had died as a result of its actions.
The incident in question occurred as part of an Australian attack in Mosul on June 13, 2017, which hit a residential building in Al-Shafaar neighborhood.
The man says 14 children were among the dead, as were nine women and two imams sheltering with them.
Evidence provided included statements by Australian troops’ personnel — including Air Marshal Mel Hupfeld, chief of joint operations — made in February 2019 that Australian planes had dropped bombs in the area that day.
Hupfeld claimed the strikes were called in by Iraqi forces fighting Daesh, and coalition forces only became aware of allegations that they had hit civilian targets after a report was published by independent website Airwars sometime later, making it difficult to verify the facts of the matter.
He added that the allegation was “credible,” but that estimates suggested 6-18 people had been killed.
A 2019 U.S. Department of Defense report also said claims of a coalition airstrike hitting civilians that day were “credible,” estimating that 11 people had died.
Hupfeld said: “We do not definitively know how these people were killed, but we do know from our review of the events that our aircrew made no error in this mission. They delivered their ordinance precisely on to the designated target in accordance with their rules of engagement. All authorities for the strike were valid and lawful.
“There was no specific intelligence to indicate civilians were present at the targeted site, but given the urgent circumstances facing the Iraqi forces at the time, it was impossible to be certain.
“We’re not blaming the Iraqi security forces for this event or this incident. We’re very cognizant of the risk of inflicting civilian casualties in a very intense, complex war zone.
“The action in Mosul was the most ferocious air campaign that we have seen in our generation. It is an unfortunate consequence of war that these civilian casualties have occurred, and as I’ve said, this is not lost on us.”