IRBIL, Iraq — The U.S. military says a misdirected airstrike this week killed 18 friendly fighters battling Islamic State alongside the international coalition in northern Syria.
U.S. Central Command said Thursday that coalition aircraft were given the wrong coordinates by the Kurdish Syrian Democratic Forces for a strike intended to target militants south of their stronghold in Tabqa.
“The coalition’s deepest condolences go out to the members of the SDF and their families,” Central Command said in a statement.
The Kurdish fighters, with air and ground support from the U.S.-led coalition, had surrounded Tabqa, which is on a dammed section of the Euphrates River just west of Raqqa, Islamic State’s de facto capital in Syria. But the strike Tuesday hit their position, killing 18 of them.
It also was not clear how many such friendly-fire strikes have happened since the campaign began against Islamic State in Iraq and Syria in 2014.
The coalition releases monthly reports of civilian casualties from airstrikes, both those confirmed and under investigation. But friendly-fire strikes are tracked internally, said U.S. Army Col. Joe Scrocca, a Baghdad-based spokesman for the coalition.
The London-based monitoring group Airwars, which works with the coalition to track airstrike casualties, has found 37 reported friendly fire strikes in Iraq and Syria since 2014. Four had been confirmed by the coalition, including the one in Tabqa, according to Airwars director Chris Wood. The others are:
A strike on Dec. 18, 2015, in Fallujah that killed at least nine Iraqi soldiers and injured 32 more.
A strike on Sept. 17, 2016, in Al Tharda, Syria, that killed at least 15 friendly Syrian forces.
A strike on Oct. 5, 2016, south of Mosul that killed 18 friendly Sunni tribal fighters.