An Australian Super Hornet air strike last year may have killed two civilian adults and injured two children when it bombed a terrace house in west Mosul, Iraq.
Deputy Chief of Joint Operations Major General Greg Bilton said the air strike occurred on May 3, but it wasn't until Amnesty International raised the matter in late August that the US-led coalition fighting Islamic State in Iraq and Syria conducted an investigation.
The human rights organisation had a witness account, but the person was not interviewed as part of any subsequent coalition or Australian investigations.
Maj Gen Bilton told journalists at a briefing, ahead of the release of a coalition report overnight, that the civilian casualties allegations are considered "credible".
He said it's possible the people involved were a family who IS were using as human shields.
Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull said the defence force went to great lengths to avoid civilian casualties.
"We have to remember... we are dealing with a ruthless and dangerous enemy in (IS and) these are terrorists who seek to kill Australians," " he told reporters in Broken Hill.
"They are a threat to the whole world."
Defence Minister Marise Payne described the incident as regrettable.
"Civilian casualties are a most regrettable outcome of the efforts that were made to liberate a number of Iraqi cities and in this case Mosul," she told ABC radio on Thursday.
Mosul, the Iraqi capital of the so-called IS caliphate, fell in July after a nine-month campaign.
At the time of the incident, Australian and coalition aircraft were supporting Iraqi security forces carrying out clearance operations on the ground.
They were coming under fire from two snipers in the second storey of a house and the Australian air strike happened within minutes.
Maj Gen Bilton said a thorough assessment was conducted to confirm it was a valid target.
An unmanned drone flying overhead provided "situational awareness" in and around the target, including three minutes of footage of the location before the strike and several minutes of footage from the Australian aircraft.
The Royal Australian Air Force fighter jet dropped a single weapon - a GPS guided bomb with a delay fuse - collapsing the second storey.
No civilian casualties were identified during a post-strike review, Maj Gen Bilton said.
Senator Payne said investigations into possible casualties began when Amnesty raised the incident with the international coalition.
Defence was told by coalition forces about the possible civilian casualty incident in February and launched its own investigation to ensure the law of armed conflict and rules of engagement had been complied with.
Amnesty welcomed Australia's willingness to investigate the incident and reiterated its calls for an international independent commission to investigate instances where there was credible evidence of international law violations, with the findings made public.
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