US Military Officials Admit Attack on Al Qaeda Leader in Syria Could Be a Mistake

US military sources appear to retract a recent missile attack in Syria that targeted an influential Al Qaeda figure, as it appears that the target was not the terrorist, but a father of a family.

This was revealed by The Washington Post, noting that, after interviews granted by the victim's relatives, it was determined that it was Lotfi Hassan Misto, 56, who lived quietly in this town in northwestern Syria.

“We are no longer sure that we have killed a senior al Qaeda official,” a defense official acknowledged. Another official, who also spoke to the newspaper on condition of anonymity, offered a different version. “While we believe that the attack did not kill the original target, we believe that he is an al Qaeda individual,” he said.

However, Hassan's brother, one of his 10 children, and six other people who knew him described him as a kind and hard-working man whose life was spent in poverty. In this regard, the spokesman for the United States Central Command (Centcom), Michael Lawhorn, said that the military is aware of the reports of a civilian casualty and continues to evaluate the outcome of the attack.

“Centcom takes all of these allegations seriously and is investigating to determine whether the action may have unintentionally resulted in harm to civilians,” Lawhorn said.

The operation was supervised by said Command, which stated, hours after the attack and without citing evidence or naming a suspect, that Predator drones had hit a “high-ranking leader of Al Qaeda.”

But now there are questions inside the Pentagon about who was killed. In the weeks since the attack, The Post has revealed, US military officials have refused to publicly identify who their target was, how the apparent mistake occurred, and whether a legitimate terrorist leader escaped.

The Pentagon will generally expand such investigations if sufficient credible evidence of civilian harm emerges.

Last year, faced with allegations that the military had covered up previous cases of errant airstrikes that killed innocent people, the Biden administration vowed to take steps it said would reduce such risks and promised greater transparency when unintentional killings occur.