I wonder why this has come to mind today. Maybe it's because I attended a recent ceremony marking the 35th anniversary of the end of active operations in the Gulf; Op Granby to the Brits, Desert Storm to our major allies.

But Ive been refreshing my memory on something that happened in that conflict. A strategic bridge over the wide Euphrates river was repeatedly attacked by coalition aircraft because it was part of an Iraqi military supply line, and was therefore a legitimate target even though it was close to a population centre.

On 14 February 1991 a Royal Air Force Tornado GR1 aircraft fired two laser-guided bombs which were aimed at the bridge. Due to a malfunction, at least one bomb failed to pick up the guidance and continued past the intended aiming point and instead struck a crowded marketplace, killing between 50 and 150 non-combatants and wounding many more.

Civilian casualties caused by coalition air operations were already under intense scrutiny, as the incident happened only the day after the widely publicised Al-Amiriyah shelter bombing in Baghdad (13 February 1991) by U.S. aircraft. Neverthelss, the facts of the Fallujah mistake being clear, the RAF spokesman Group Captain David Henderson issued a statement within hours that the bomb had malfunctioned and failed to follow its laser guidance, and acknowledged that the RAF had made an error.

This acknowledgement was widely reported by British media and praised shortly afterwards in the