Perfectly deadly Lives torn apart by missiles give lie to UK's claim of precision campaign

The transcript of the drone operators' remarks is brief and blunt, but it captures with grim clarity the moment they realised their deadly mistake.

- Emma Graham-Harrison Joe Dyke 

"Two children," someone called out in the control room, as hundreds of miles away in Mosul, under a warm late autumn sun, the missile they had fired detonated beside a woman and her young family.

Enam Younis, 31 at the time, was thrown to the ground by the blast and has never walked again. Her older daughter, Taiba, six, inquisitive and desperate to start school, was killed instantly. Zahra, just three, was hurled over a fence. She survived but was peppered with shrapnel that tore into her stomach and is still lodged deep in her skull. Doctors have said that if it moves, it could cause a devastating brain injury.

There was a third child, Ali, a toddler too young to walk, who was shielded from the drone cameras - and the worst of the blast - by his mother's arms, but who still lost parts of a foot and a hand.

Younis was taken out of Mosul for treatment and even six years later, her memories are too painful for her to return to the city she called home. "It is still impossible for me to think about going to Mosul now," she said weeping. "I didn't even visit my daughter's grave. I can't do it."

Britain's planes and drones operated over Mosul throughout the two-year battle to reclaim it from Islamic State (IS), which began in 2016. The Ministry of Defence has detailed how many militants were killed by Paveway bombs and Brimstone and Hellfire missiles it used. The UK military claim to have fought a "perfect" war in Iraq, one in which British weapons did not harm a single civilian, even as missiles from their allies in the US-led coalition killed and maimed hundreds.

An investigation into this implausible claim by the Guardian and Airwars, the not-for-profit watchdog that investigates harm to civilians in conflict zones, led reporters to Younis's current home, in the northern Iraqi city of Erbil, as well as to the site where her daughter was killed.