THE Hill, Sept. 19, 2016: The situation in Syria grew even murkier Monday as the U.S. military investigated a weekend airstrike that reportedly hit Syrian troops by mistake and a week-old ceasefire appeared to collapse.
The Hill’s Kristina Wong has more on the U.S. airstrike:
The U.S. military is still investigating whether a coalition airstrike accidentally hit Syrian military forces over the weekend, but a defense official said one thing being looked into is whether the forces were “easily identifiable as Syrian government forces.”
“We’re still in the relatively early stages of determining what happened in this instance. It is premature to say we have any real clarity with what we will conclude contributed to the situation,” the official told The Hill.
“Clearly one of the factors that might be at play here is whether the forces were easily identifiable as Syrian government forces,” the official added.
Investigators are looking into whether the forces struck were Syrian prisoners or conscripts forced to fight on behalf of the regime, leading to a case of mistaken identity since such forces would likely not be wearing uniforms, the Daily Beast reported.
In ceasefire news, the Syrian military declared it over, but U.S. officials were not ready to give in.
“Syria’s army announces the end of the freeze on fighting that began at 07:00 pm (1600 UTC) on September 12, 2016 in accordance with the U.S.-Russia agreement,” the general command of the armed forces said in a statement carried by Syria’s state-run SANA news agency.
The State Department followed up with its own statement putting the onus on Russia to uphold the ceasefire.
“We are prepared to extend the cessation of hostilities, while working to strengthen it and expand deliveries of assistance,” State Department spokesman John Kirby said in the statement. “We will be consulting with our Russian counterparts to continue to urge them to use their influence on Assad to these ends. While we have seen comments attributed to the Syrian military, our arrangement is with Russia, which is responsible for the Syrian regime’s compliance, so we expect Russia to clarify their position.”