If you get the following error while trying to delete an image in Docker:

Error response from daemon: conflict: unable to remove repository reference "some-image" (must force) - container 3ab4c18d2219 is using its referenced image 133c1827439a

You may already have tried looking for the container, but it seems to not exist!

How to Remove the Docker Container and Image

This usually means that the Docker container has already terminated, and is why you won’t see it running.

Luckily, this issue is easy to solve.

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docker container rm 3ab4c18d2219
docker image rm some-image

Not able to identify the container?

If you are not able to find the container, you can use the following command to find all containers, not only the ones still running:

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docker container ls -a