In 2017, the US bombed a piece of strategic infrastructure in Syria, the Tabqa Dam on the Euphrates River, despite it being on a no-strike list, the New York Times reported.

A B-52 bomber dropped some of the heaviest weapons in the US Air Force arsenal on the target, including at least one BLU-109 bunker buster, which is designed to destroy fortified concrete targets. This bomb pierced through five stories in one of the dam’s towers, but didn’t explode.

If the Soviet-designed earth-and-concrete structure had failed, tens of thousands of people living in a valley below would likely have died.