America's military is investigating a recent strike in Syria that targeted someone whom Central Command described as an influential al Qaeda leader.
It is no longer clear that is the case. The strike in question occurred in northwest Syria on May 3, though U.S. Central Command acknowledged local reports of a civilian casualty on May 9. It is standard procedure to investigate this.
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Lutfi Hassan Masto was killed by a missile strike on that day, the Syrian Civil Defense, a humanitarian response group often referred to as the “White Helmets," said on social media. The organization also noted it had recovered his body and transported it to a medical point.
Lutfi Hassan Masto, a civilian aged 60, was killed in a missile strike by an unidentified drone while he was grazing sheep on the outskirts of Qurqaniya, north of #Idlib, today, Wednesday, May 3. The missile strike also resulted in the death of several sheep. Our teams recovered… pic.twitter.com/mXZGSEaqLW
— The White Helmets (@SyriaCivilDef) May 3, 2023
Masto's family, however, said he was not a terrorist or associated with al Qaeda, and now officials are doubting their initial assessment as well, according to the Washington Post.
“If they claim that he’s a terrorist, or that they got someone from al-Qaeda,” Masto’s brother told the outlet, “they’re all liars.”
Masto had a normal morning on the day he was killed, having breakfast with his family, herding his sheep, and then enjoying tea with his brother. Shortly after parting with his brother to return to his animals, an MQ-9 Predator drone launched a Hellfire missile at him.
One official told the outlet, “We are no longer confident we killed a senior AQ official,” while another said, “Though we believe the strike did not kill the original target, we believe the person to be al-Qaeda.”
CENTCOM has repeatedly declined to identify who the target of the strike was or whether they believe the intended target was a casualty of it.
"CENTCOM continues to assess the outcome of the strike and has been made aware of allegations that the strike may have resulted in a civilian casualty," Maj. John Moore, a CENTCOM spokesman, told the Washington Examiner on Thursday. "CENTCOM takes all such allegations seriously and is investigating to determine whether or not the action may have unintentionally resulted in harm to civilians.”
Moore also reiterated the department's stance that the target was a "senior al-Qaeda leader," but he did not respond to additional questions.
The U.S. military frequently relies on its strike capabilities to conduct counterterrorism operations in Syria and the Middle East, though the program has faced significant questions and subsequent changes in recent years under the Biden administration.
The Defense Department announced a plan to reduce civilian casualties in strikes last August, with the new policy emphasizing and establishing a "center of excellence" to promote best practices, though it came amid allegations from critics that they had killed civilians unnecessarily for years.
The Pentagon has taken significant criticism for an Aug. 29, 2021, strike in Afghanistan that targeted a civilian, killing him and nine others, including members of his family. During the military’s final days in Afghanistan, the United States launched a drone strike to prevent what they believed to be an imminent attack on U.S. troops evacuating thousands of people who were believed to be at risk under the new Taliban regime, but they acknowledged weeks later that Zemari Ahmadi, the target, had no terror ties.
Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin signed off on an investigation led by U.S. Air Force Inspector General Lt. Gen. Sami Said that concluded there were no illegalities with the strike, though he emphasized the issue confirmation bias played in the strike, and there were no punishments resulting from it either.
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In May of last year, another Pentagon investigation, this one into a March 2019 drone strike in Baghuz, Syria, that killed dozens of people, including women and children, concluded without any disciplinary action for the service members involved.
While U.S. Army Forces Commander Gen. Michael Garrett's investigation found the ground force commander “did not deliberately or with wanton disregard for civilian casualties, and did not violate the [law of war]," there were “numerous policy compliance deficiencies at multiple levels of command."