No U.S. troops were injured in the strike, but U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces said American commandos temporarily withdrew from their observation post on Mishtanur hill near Kobani and returned on Saturday.
A senior U.S. military official told Military Times on Friday that the incident was not an attack by Turkish forces, but some U.S. troops, former senior U.S. officials and artillery veterans say that the attack appears to be intentional.
CNN’s Barbara Starr reported, citing a U.S. official, that the U.S. has not come to a final determination on whether the Turkish artillery strike was deliberate.
According to the Washington Post, an Army officer with knowledge of the situation said that multiple 155 mm artillery rounds had been fired near the U.S. outpost landing on both sides of the base with a “bracketing effect.”
Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters at the Pentagon Friday that Turkey had the locations of U.S. forces “down to explicit grid coordinate detail.”
With knowledge of the locations of U.S. forces , former U.S. Army Europe commander retired Lt. Gen. Mark Hertling, tweeted that the positions of U.S. forces should have been plugged into artillery fire control computers as “no fire areas,” or NFAs.
Hertling tweeted that the either Turkish “artillery soldiers were incompetent, or this was a purposeful act to send a message to U.S. and SDF/Kurds. Turkey fired on a NATO ally.“
The former American envoy for the anti-ISIS coaltion Brett McGurk echoed those sentiments.
“Turkish forces have fired on a declared U.S. military outpost in northern Syria. Turkey knows all of our locations down to the precise grid coordinate,” McGurk tweeted Friday.
A senior enlisted U.S. artillery soldier told Military Times that the NFAs should have been clearly marked by a fire direction officer, “especially when firing in an area with high chance collateral damage.”
The soldier, who spoke to Military Times on condition of anonymity, said “in NATO and Western armies we follow a very strict crew drill procedures before firing artillery both in training and combat.”
