Who Is Conducting Airstrikes On ISIS?

The United States military’s admission and subsequent investigation of an airstrike conducted in Mosul, Iraq March 17, which could have killed as many as 200 civilians, including women and children, have brought intense focus on its use of such attacks while attempting to drive the Islamic State (ISIS) terror group out of Syria and Iraq.

The top commander in Iraq and Army Lt. Gen. Stephen Townsend, however, explained to reporters Tuesday that the weapon the U.S. used for the strike would not have been able to destroy a building like the one in western Mosul’s al-Jadida district that was called in by Iraqi security forces.

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"Actually our munitions, the fact that the whole building collapsed, actually contradicts our involvement," Townsend said. "The munition that we used should not have collapsed an entire building. So that is one of those things that we are trying to figure out in the investigative process because we have ... munitions in our inventory that can collapse whole buildings. That is not what we used in this case."

Townsend also expanded on those comments, stating that the explosion could have been a combination of the airstrike and ISIS’ use of improvised explosive devices, or IEDs.

Prior to the controversial and terrifying airstrike, the Pentagon had released the total number of strikes its conducted under Operation Inherent Resolve since it began in August 2014. As of March 13, a total of 18,948 strikes were conducted, with the U.S. responsible for 14,951 in Iraq and Syria.

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But nearly 4,000 of the total strikes were undertaken by other members of the coalition battling ISIS. To date, Australia, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Jordan, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom had participated in the strikes in Iraq. Those same countries, minus Belgium but including Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates, had been part of strikes in Syria.