U.S. Central Command has launched an investigation after a drone strike against a senior al Qaeda leader in northwest Syria on Friday may have killed civilians, according to a spokesman for Central Command.

The strike in Idlib, Syria, was carried out by an MQ-9 Reaper, targeting a senior al Qaeda leader and planner, Capt. Bill Urban said in a statement. The name of the target was not released, though he said the strike against the leader would disrupt al Qaeda's operations and their ability to plan attacks.

An initial review of the strike indicated the possibility of civilian casualties.

"We abhor the loss of innocent life and take all possible measures to prevent them," Urban said. "The possibility of a civilian casualty was immediately self-reported to U.S. Central Command. We are initiating a full investigation of the allegations and will release the results when appropriate."

In September, the military carried out another strike in northwest Syria targeting a senior al Qaeda leader.

The acknowledgment of potential civilian casualties and the immediate opening of an investigation comes after Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin ordered a review of a strike in Syria in March 2019, which the Pentagon only recently admitted had killed civilians.

In mid-November, U.S. Central Command acknowledged for the first time that previously undisclosed airstrikes in Syria carried out days before the fall of ISIS in 2019 killed multiple civilians, including women and children.

That disclosure followed the publication of a New York Times investigation into the strikes.

On Nov. 17, Austin told reporters during a news conference that he is "committed to adjusting our policies and our procedures to make sure that we improve," and that he would hold senior leaders responsible for putting those into effect.

Austin said he believes "leaders in this department should be held to account for high standards of conduct and leadership."

"And for my part as secretary of Defense, I have every intent to uphold that standard," Austin added.

But the Defense Department has yet to hold anyone accountable for a drone strike on Aug. 29 in Kabul, Afghanistan, in which 10 civilians, including seven children, were killed. An Air Force review of the strike found that significant errors were made but that there was no violation of law, including the law of war.

There are currently two reviews related to civilian casualties from U.S. military strikes.

The first is a civilian harm study conducted by the RAND Corporation that Congress ordered in the National Defense Authorization Act of 2020. The second, also conducted by the RAND Corporation, focuses on civilian casualties in Syria. Austin said that is undergoing a security review.

CHICAGO — Art can be beautiful and inspirational. But for some artists, creating works that stir the soul and the mind goes beyond just the brush and canvas.

Socio-political activist and artist Pritika Chowdhry focuses her work on reframing traumatic geopolitical events like 9/11. She sees art as a way to ask difficult questions.

“This is the artist asking, 'God are you there? Do you see what's happening? Are you still there?'”

She studies seismic geopolitical events in depth and channels that into her artwork.

“And then, I try to excavate things from those events that have been not spoken about as much as they probably should have been,” she explained.

Chowdhry calls these the counter-memories of trauma. Sept. 11, for example, she says became about never forgetting the nearly 3,000 lives lost that day. But she says the lives lost went far beyond that in countries half a world away.

“In the context of 9/11, it's almost unpatriotic to say, ‘Hey, but what about all these other lives that are now in the millions that were lost?'”

Chowdhry has channeled that notion in what she calls the Counter Memory Project, an effort to memorialize the "unbearable memories."

“This is a...this is a scale of justice," she said.

In one of her works "Ungrievable Lives: Ghosts of 9/11," she examines what she calls the "differential values placed on human life."

“The heavier side has this gold bullion bar, and it says, ‘One life 9/11, 2001.’ And then if you turn it over, it says. ‘One of 2,983. Made in America.’”

It’s a commentary on what lives are worth shedding tears over and which ones are not.

“What is this gold standard? Clearly, an American life,” said Chowdhry.

On the other side of the scale rests a piece of meat, hair, and nail clippings.

“This is representative, as I was saying earlier of the non-American lives that we do not grieve for,” said Chowdhry.

It’s undoubtedly provocative, something Chowdhry knows all too well.

“I'm an American citizen. I love this country despite all its flaws. I do. I call this home,” she said. “It's OK for us to let our guard down once in a while to introspect and see we, even as a powerful moral nation get it wrong.”

Getting it wrong was punctuated in recent weeks as the last known missile fired in Afghanistan by the U.S. military last turned out to be a grave error.

The botched American drone strike killed 10 civilians including seven children. The youngest child Sumaya was just 2 years old. On September 17, weeks after the strike, General Frank McKenzie, commander of U.S. Central Command, acknowledged the civilian causalities.

“I offer my profound condolences to the family and friends of those who were killed,” said McKenzie. “But it was a mistake, and I offer my sincere apology.”

It was a stunning admission coming at the end of the United States’ longest-running war. But Chowdhry says she is optimistic that it was a signal of change.

“Maybe there is a there is a shift,” she said. “We're finally witnessing a shift after 20 years where I think finally people even in America are realizing that maybe what we're doing is wrong and maybe the people over there are human, are grievable.”

And while she knows some may be angered by her anti-memorial work, she hopes to tilt the scale to the center, valuing each life lost as equally tragic and worthy of remembrance.

Sorry is not enough for the Afghan survivors of an errant U.S. drone strike that killed 10 members of their family, including seven children.

Emal Ahmadi, whose 3-year-old daughter Malika was killed on Aug. 29, when the U.S. hellfire missile struck his elder brother's car, told The Associated Press on Saturday that the family demands Washington investigate who fired the drone and punish the military personnel responsible for the strike.

"That is not enough for us to say sorry," said Ahmadi. "The U.S.A. should find the person who did this."

Video above: Pentagon now calls deadly Kabul strike an error

Ahmadi said the family is also seeking financial compensation for their losses and demanded that several members of the family be relocated to a third country, without specifying which country.

The AP and other news organizations in Kabul reported after the strike that the driver of the targeted vehicle, Zemerai Ahmadi, was a longtime employee at an American humanitarian organization and cited an absence of evidence to support the Pentagon’s assertion that the vehicle contained explosives.

The missile struck as the car was pulling into the family's driveway and the children ran to greet Zemerai.

On Friday, U.S. Marine Gen. Frank McKenzie, head of U.S. Central Command, called the strike a "tragic mistake," and after weeks of denials, said that innocent civilians were indeed killed in the attack and not an Islamic State extremist as was announced earlier.

The drone strike followed a devastating suicide bombing by the Islamic State group — a rival of the Taliban — that killed 169 Afghans and 13 U.S. military personnel at one of the gates to the Kabul airport. For days, desperate Afghans had swarmed the checkpoints outside the airport, trying to leave the country amid the chaotic U.S. and NATO troops pullout, fearing for their future under the Taliban.

McKenzie apologized for the error and said the United States is considering making reparation payments to the family of the victims.

Emal Ahmadi, who said he heard of the apology from friends in America, insisted that it won't bring back members of his family and while he expressed relief for the U.S. apology and recognition that his family members were innocent victims, he said he was frustrated that it took weeks of pleading with Washington to at least make a call to the family.

Even as evidence mounted to the contrary, Pentagon officials asserted that the strike had been conducted correctly, to protect the U.S. troops remaining at Kabul's airport ahead of the final pullout the following day, on Aug. 30.

Looking exhausted, sitting in front of the charred ruins of Zemarai's car, Ahmadi said he wanted more than an apology from the United States — he wanted justice, including an investigation into who carried out the strike "and I want him punished by the U.S.A."

In the days before the Pentagon's apology, accounts from the family, documents from colleagues seen by The AP and the scene at the family home — where Zemerai’s car was struck by the missile — all sharply contradicted the accounts by the U.S. military. Instead, they painted the picture of a family that had worked for Americans and were trying to gain visas to the U.S., fearing for their lives under the Taliban.

Zemerai was the family's breadwinner had looked after his three brothers, including Emal, and their children.

"Now I am then one who is responsible for all my family and I am jobless," said Emal Ahmadi. The situation "is not good," said Ahmadi of life under the Taliban. International aid groups and the United Nations have warned of a looming humanitarian crisis that could drive most Afghans below the poverty level.

McKenzie said the decision to strike a white Toyota Corolla sedan, after having tracked it for about eight hours, was made in an "earnest belief" — based on a standard of "reasonable certainty" — that it posed an imminent threat to American forces at the Kabul airport. The car was believed to have been carrying explosives in its trunk, he said.

But Ahmadi wondered how the family's home could have been mistaken for an Islamic State hideout.

"The U.S.A. can see from everywhere," he said of U.S. drone capabilities. "They can see that there were innocent children near the car and in the car. Whoever did this should be punished."

"It isn't right," he added.