{"id":11987,"date":"2023-05-20T03:12:51","date_gmt":"2023-05-20T08:12:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/?p=11987"},"modified":"2023-05-20T03:12:56","modified_gmt":"2023-05-20T08:12:56","slug":"us-no-longer-confident-syria-strike-killed-the-right-man-wapo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/?p=11987","title":{"rendered":"US \u2018no longer confident\u2019 Syria strike killed the right man \u2013 WaPo"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

A man killed in a US drone strike in northwestern Syria earlier this month may not have been a senior Al-Qaeda leader as the Pentagon previously claimed, the Washington Post reported on Thursday, citing US officials.\u00a0
The Pentagon has so far refused to name the target of the attack. However, relatives and neighbors of the victim claim he had no affiliation with the Islamist militants.\u00a0
Two unnamed officials cited by the Post raised doubts about the strike, which occurred in a rural area of Idlib Province on May 3.
\u201cWe are no longer confident we killed a senior AQ official,\u201d\u00a0one of the officials said, referring to Al-Qaeda. The second official added that\u00a0\u201cthough we believe the strike did not kill the original target, we believe the person to be al-Qaeda.\u201d\u00a0
According to the Post, residents of the Syrian village targeted in the US strike identified the victim as Lotfi Hassan Misto, a 56-year-old farmer and father of 10. They told the newspaper that the man was watching over his flock of sheep when he was killed by a Hellfire missile. Family members and neighbors insist that Misto had no connection to any militant group.
\u201cIf they claim that he\u2019s a terrorist, or that they got someone from al-Qaeda, they\u2019re all liars,\u201d\u00a0Misto\u2019s brother told the Post.\u00a0
US Central Command spokesman Michael Lawhorn said the military\u00a0\u201ctakes all such allegations seriously and is investigating to determine whether or not the action may have unintentionally resulted in harm to civilians.\u201d
When provided with coordinates for the site of the strike, which landed near Misto\u2019s home and chicken farm, an unnamed defense official told the Post the location is a\u00a0\u201cknown area of interest\u201d\u00a0to al-Qaeda. Local residents disputed that claim, insisting that terrorists do not live or operate near Misto\u2019s home.\u00a0
The Pentagon was previously forced to admit that a similar drone strike in Kabul in 2021, in which 10 people were killed, was a\u00a0\u201ctragic mistake.\u201d\u00a0The US initially claimed it had killed a high-level Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS\/ISIL) militant, but later acknowledged that the raid killed civilians.
Rt<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A man killed in a US drone strike in northwestern Syria earlier this month may not have been a senior Al-Qaeda leader as the Pentagon previously claimed, the Washington Post reported on Thursday, citing US officials.\u00a0The Pentagon has so far refused to name the target of the attack. However, relatives and neighbors of the victim […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":11988,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1154],"tags":[7060,5218,3807],"class_list":["post-11987","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-trending","tag-american-drone","tag-kill","tag-peace"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11987","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11987"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11987\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11989,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11987\/revisions\/11989"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/11988"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11987"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11987"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11987"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}