In the last days of the battle against the ISIS in Syria, when members of the once-fierce caliphate were cornered in a dirt field next to a town called Baghuz, a US military drone circled high overhead, hunting for military targets. But it saw only a large crowd of women and children huddled against a river bank. Without warning, an American F-15E attack jet streaked across the drone’s highdefinition field of vision and dropped a 500pound bomb on the crowd, swallowing it in a shuddering blast. As the smoke cleared, a few people stumbled away in search of cover. Then a jet tracking them dropped one 2,000-pound bomb, then another, killing most of the survivors. 214