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Before the attack, an official at the coalition air command center in Qatar phoned a Russian official at a military base in Syria and informed him of the general location where the strike would occur. U.S. officials notify the Russian military of strike plans in certain cases, including when they say that government forces may be in the area.
About 20 minutes after the first bomb was dropped, a Russian official called back, saying he had something to pass along to the designated liaison officer.
By the time the U.S. officer spoke with the Russian official, who informed him that coalition planes might be hitting Syrian government forces, almost an hour had gone by. Less than five minutes later, commanders gave the order to cut the short operation.
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At the Pentagon, senior officials were aghast, worrying the incident might derail a hoped-for cease-fire between the Syrian government and opposition forces. The Pentagon was already on the defensive over its barely veiled opposition to negotiating a deal with Russia that would have led to unprecedented military cooperation with Moscow.
Fady Mallah, who leads a pro-government militia that was present at Jabal al-Tharda, said that Islamic State forces were not far from where Syrian fighters were hit. He said a large number of militants were at “shooting distance” — about 200 meters, he said, from pro-government forces at the time of the attack.
After the strike, men identified as Syrian soldiers described it on Syrian television, saying they had observed surveillance planes all day before the strikes began in the late afternoon. Their positions, which included trenches, security walls, tanks and vehicles, were struck more than 12 times, they said from a hospital in Deir al-Zour.
“At first, we thought they were our planes,” one young fighter
told a pro-government news channel from his bed. “Then they started hitting us. . . . All our colleagues were killed.”
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