US adopts Israeli tactic of warning occupants of buildings before destroying it

CNN:
The U.S. has adopted a unique Israeli battlefield tactic in its fight against ISIS: exploding a missile above a building to warn civilians inside that it's about to be bombed.

Israeli forces have widely used the so-called knock-on-the-roof operations in Gaza attacks in recent years to try to get civilians out before they are hit.

The first public revelation of the U.S. using a "knock operation" came Tuesday at a press briefing by Air Force Maj. Gen. Peter E. Gersten, deputy commander for operations and intelligence for the anti-ISIS Operation Inherent Resolve.

Gersten described a strike against an ISIS financial storage center on April 5 in southern Mosul, Iraq. The U.S. had been closely watching the house of an ISIS finance operative, or "finance emir" in the words of Gersten.

"He was the major distributor of funds to Daesh fighters," Gersten said, using another name for ISIS. "We watched him come and go from his house, we watched his supplies, we watched the security that was involved in it. And we also watched occasionally a female and her children in and out of the quarters."

Using reconnaissance aircraft and other intelligence assets to keep watch, the U.S. then began to formulate a plan, Gersten said, to get women, children and other civilians out of the building.

"We went as far as actually to put a Hellfire on top of the building and air-burst it so it wouldn't destroy the building, simply knock on the roof to ensure that she and the children were out of the building," he recounted. "And then we proceeded with our operations."
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The tactic is intended to take away the enemy's victim strategy in the case of Hamas.  I don't think ISIL has played that card, but it is typical of the Obama administration's control freak approach to military operations.

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