Defence minister Dilan Yesilgöz has apologised to the relatives of civilians killed in a Dutch air strike on the Iraqi city of Mosul in 2016, saying new information shows the target was not a legitimate military objective.
The families will also receive financial compensation, the minister said in a briefing to parliament.
The attack took place on 22 March 2016 during the international coalition campaign against Islamic State. Dutch aircraft bombed a residential building on the university campus in Mosul after intelligence suggested the site was being used as an IS headquarters.
Seven civilians were killed in the strike, including two men, four women and a child, from two different families, according to an internal defence investigation.
The ministry now says that, based on information available during the review, the building should not have been considered a valid military target. At the time of the operation, however, the pilots believed they were striking an IS command post.
Yesilgöz said the aircrew could not have known that civilians were inside the building and that the investigation found no grounds to blame the Dutch personnel involved.
The public prosecution service reached a similar conclusion last year and decided not to bring charges, saying there was no evidence that the pilots could have foreseen civilian casualties.
The Netherlands was part of the US-led coalition fighting Islamic State in Iraq and Syria at the time of the bombing. The minister said the apology and compensation are intended to acknowledge the suffering of the families affected.
A Dutch-led bombing raid on the Iraqi town of Hawija in 2015 resulted in some 70 civilian deaths. A formal inquiry found last year that the Netherlands had been aware of the risks when F-16 fighter jets bombed an Islamic State car bomb factory.
The raid caused a secondary explosion, triggered by munitions stored in the factory, that destroyed hundreds of buildings in the residential area and killed dozens of civilians, some of whom had fled from other parts of the country.
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