A/HRC/37/72 the time. During a briefing of journalists on 28 March, the Combined Joint Task Force (CJTF) of the international coalition took responsibility for the strike noting that it had targeted 30 ISIL fighters using the school, and that it could not corroborate the allegation that internally displaced persons used the school.1 On 7 July, the Task Force announced that, upon further review of available information, it assessed there was insufficient information to find that civilians the strike harmed civilians.2 8. The Commission initially reported on this incident in July 2017 (see A/HRC/36/55, para. 79). As part of its investigation, it conducted 20 interviews with survivors, relatives of victims, rescuers, village residents, and individuals onsite after the airstrikes. Interviewees all explained that, since 2012, Al-Badiya school housed internally displaced families from Palmyra (Homs), al-Sukhna (Homs), al-Qaryatayn (Homs), al-Khafsa (Aleppo), Maskanah (Aleppo), al-Bab (Aleppo), and Hamah countryside. Some of the residents were recent arrivals while other internally displaced persons had been living in the school for years. More than 200 people were estimated to be living in the school at the time of the airstrike, of which only a few survived. One-hundred and fifty bodies were retrieved from the site though others remained under the rubble as, three days after the airstrike, on 24 March, ISIL prevented rescuers from continuing searches. 9. Of the more than 200 residents at the school, only 12 survivors were identified by the Commission, and several of them sustained serious injuries such as severe burns and the loss of limbs. Survivors reported being blasted through windows during the explosions and landing outside of the school, which saved them from being crushed under the rubble. The vast majority of survivors were women and children, namely four women and six children, the youngest a 10-month-old baby. Interviewees identified the fatalities they knew personally, the majority of them relatives. These included eight women, one of whom was in the final stages of pregnancy, and 21 children, all but one under the age of 11. 10. The school was hit by three airstrikes, each using multiple bombs that destroyed most of the building rendering it uninhabitable. Photos provided by interviewees show evidence of a massive airstrike, and multiple impacts from aerial bombs show delayed fuzing aimed at bringing down the entire building. Photographs of remnants also show fragments of Hellfire missiles, which the Commission has previously documented being used by the international coalition to target survivors of airstrikes (see A/HRC/36/55, para. 57). While many interviewees said that they did not see ISIL members in the school, one survivor who arrived at the school days before the strike said that his family was registered by an ISIL member shortly after moving in, but that the fighter did not reside in the school. Initial information that two families of ISIL fighters had lived in the school but left one month before the strike has not been corroborated (see A/HRC/36/55, para. 79). 11. Information gathered by the Commission does not support the claim that 30 ISIL fighters were in the school at the time of the strike, nor that the school was otherwise being used by ISIL. Rather, the status of casualties and nature of Al-Badiya building is widely divergent from the international coalition’s assessment. Information that residents of the school were internally displaced families, including a large number of women and children, and that the school had been used to shelter internally displaced persons since 2012 should have been readily available to the coalition’s targeting team. The Commission therefore concludes that the international coalition should have known the nature of the target and failed to take all feasible precautions to avoid or minimize incidental loss of civilian life, injury to civilians and damage to civilian objects, in violation of international humanitarian law. The subsequent investigation conducted by the international coalition should have been able to identify the high number of civilian casualties resulting from this incident. 1 2 News Transcript, Department of Defense Briefing by Gen. Townsend via Telephone from Baghdad, Iraq, 18 March 2017, available at www.defense.gov/News/Transcripts/TranscriptView/Article/1133033/department-of-defense-briefing-by-gen-townsend-via-telephone-from-bagdadiraq. Combined Joint Task Force — Operation Inherent Resolve Monthly Civilian Casualty Report Release No: 17-258 July 7, 2017, available at www.centcom.mil/MEDIA/PRESS-RELEASES/PressRelease-View/Article/1239870/combined-joint-task-force-operation-inherent-resolve-monthlycivilian-casualty. 33