The Pentagon said Tuesday that intelligence errors resulted in a US-led coalition air strike in Syria in September that reportedly killed around 90 Syrian government forces. There were "errors in the development of intelligence, as well as missed opportunities for coalition members on duty to recognize and voice contrary evidence to decision-makers," the US military's Central Command said in a statement following a six-week probe into the September 17 attack near Deir Azzor.
The US-led coalition is focused on attacking the Islamic State group in Syria and Iraq and does not want to get involved in Syria's brutal civil war. Australian, Danish, British and American planes all took part in the air strike, which the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group has said killed at least 90 regime troops.
The Pentagon said it had only been able to conclusively count 15 deaths, but acknowledged the toll was possibly much higher. "In this incident, we made an unintentional, regrettable error primarily based on human factors in several areas in the targeting process," Brigadier General Richard Coe, who investigated the case, told reporters.
Key among these mistakes was an early misidentification of a Syrian vehicle as belonging to IS jihadists, which colored subsequent intel assessments. Further complicating matters, the troops were not wearing recognizable military uniforms or carrying identifying flags, the Pentagon said.
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