Ministry of Defense find footage of Hawija, Iraq ten years after bombing mission

After nearly a decade, the Ministry of Defense has finally found the video footage captured the morning after a Dutch F-16 fighter jet completed a bombing mission targetting Hawija, Iraq. The search was triggered by a report in the Volksrant on Monday, which alleged the video was never located. The incident in early June 2015 resulted in the deaths of at least 70 civilians.

Dutch Defense Minister Ruben Brekelmans called it “extremely undesirable that these images were only tracked down ten years after the fact, and after the investigation by the Sorgdrager Commission, despite previous efforts to retrieve these images.” He will order an outside firm to carry out an investigation to determine how this could have happened, he went on to write in a letter on Tuesday to the Tweede Kamer, the lower house of Parliament.

The Sorgdrager Commission investigated the attack on Hawija. The consequences of the bombing were kept secret from Members of Parliament for years. Sorgdrager published her report early this year, which stated that the military and the ministry does not have its archives in order.

The Tweede Kamer will speak to members of the Sorgdrager committee later on Thursday.

“I am now going to launch the investigation into how this footage was only tracked down at this stage,” the minister wrote. The footage was found on a system at the Leeuwarden Air Base. Brekelmans is also interested in finding out how improvements can be made to the ministry's archiving.

An Islamic State (ISIS) bomb factory was the target of the Dutch air forces attack in Hawija. It turned out that there was a lot more explosive material stored at the location than the Dutch military had anticipated.

Due to this, a second explosion occurred after the attack, which leveled a large part of the nearby area. An American drone also filmed part of Hawija the morning after the attack. That footage was saved.