IRBIL, Iraq -- Victims of a U.S. airstrike last month face dire prognoses after being trapped for days in a rubble-strewn neighborhood of Mosul without medical treatment.
The March 17 strike, believed to have killed more than 200 people, has drawn international attention to the plight of civilians trapped in western Mosul as Iraqi forces and a U.S.-led coalition try to capture the city from Islamic State militants.
U.S. military commanders concede that their airstrike was likely responsible for the deaths, though parallel U.S. and Iraqi investigations won't be completed until later this month.
"We are very careful about how much collateral damage we are going to cause," U.S. Brig. Gen. Rick Uribe, who is responsible for approving strikes in many parts of Iraq, said in an interview.
U.S. commanders say that targeting specialists routinely conduct scans before approving any bombings. But Uribe said Islamic State militants have been forcibly herding civilians into buildings before airstrikes, in an apparent attempt to cause civilian deaths.
"We're here to defeat them," he said of the militants, "and we're going to do it the moral way."
People injured by the strike were unsure how the government inquiries might help them.
Abdullah Xalil Mutar, speaking from his hospital bed in Irbil, said he had been holding his 2-year-old son Ahmed on his lap, while his wife and children were in another room, when the airstrike hit. The 47-year-old gestured with his injured left hand as he recalled the strike, his injured groin and foot also wrapped in bandages.
He tried to shield the boy with his body as the house caved in around them, then caught fire.
"I was holding him for two hours," Mutar said.
Through the smoke and flames, he could hear his 21-year-old son Khaled calling, "Where are you, Daddy?"
"Help me!" Mutar shouted. "Get me out of here! I'm here! I'm your father!"
Khaled found them and managed to pull the toddler out. But he couldn't free his father; Mutar was trapped by the wreckage and was fainting.
Mutar said he told his older son: "Take Ahmed and let me die."
Khaled carried his brother to safety, then returned with neighbors to free his father an hour later. Mutar's back and foot had been badly burned, but he was grateful to be alive.
The Iraqi government had advised residents to stay in their homes instead of fleeing. People thought multistory houses were the safest, Mutar said, and four or five families were sheltered in many of those larger houses.
"People felt secure," he said.
Mutar had taken in a family of four. After the strike, he found the bodies of the couple and their two children, ages 3 and 6. He had to bury them in his garden because militants had the area of the airstrike surrounded for days.
"Daesh said, 'We're not going to let you go to the army side,'" he recalled, using an Arabic acronym to refer to the Islamic State.
Iraqi soldiers reached Mutar's home four days after the attack.
They took him to a field hospital. By then, Mutar's foot had turned black. Doctors had hoped to save it, but the color hasn't improved. Now, Mutar can no longer move it. Recently, new doctors went to see him. Mutar's cousin knows their specialty but hasn't told him yet: amputations.
"It's been two weeks I'm like this: I can't work, I can't do anything," Mutar said. "I'm not a politician. I'm not a soldier. I'm just a truck driver. I just want to go back to my family and be safe."
Downstairs at the hospital lay Ali Thanoon, one of the few survivors to emerge from a house near Mutar's that had been packed with 150 people.
The owner was not a militant, but rather a good Samaritan, said Thanoon's brother, Mubashar. The man had welcomed neighbors who needed a place to hide from the fighting, making space and sharing food.
The airstrike leveled the multistory building and killed 21 members of Ali Thanoon's family, including his seven children, though he doesn't know that yet.
"We're waiting to tell him," his brother said outside his hospital room Friday.
Thanoon spent five days trapped under the rubble after the strike, with injuries to his eyes, back and arms. He's had four surgeries and is facing more. Metal pins jut from his arms. He still can't walk.
Mubashar Thanoon fears for his own family, still living with him in west Mosul.
"We just want to live, be safe and secure," he said, insisting that no Islamic State militants had stationed themselves in his brother's house. "There was no Daesh in his house, not even on the roof. And it still got the airstrike."
A Section on 04/02/2017