US Air Attacks over Syria, Iraq Kill 12 Civilians per Day

Rasa - An Airwars investigation revealed that civilian casualties from the US-led war against ISIL are on pace to double under the US President Donald Trump.

News ID: 431063

Date: 17 July 2017 - 22:24

RNA - Airwars researchers estimate that at least 2,300 civilians likely died from Coalition strikes overseen by the Obama White House, roughly 80 each month in Iraq and Syria. As of July 13, more than 2,200 additional civilians appear to have been killed by Coalition raids since Trump was inaugurated, upwards of 360 per month, or 12 or more civilians killed for every single day of his administration, Daily Beast reported.

The Coalition’s own confirmed casualty numbers, while much lower than other estimates, also show the same trend. Forty percent of the 603 civilians so far admitted killed by the alliance died in just the first four months of Trump’s presidency, the Coalition’s own data show.

The high civilian toll in part reflects the brutal final stages of the war, with the densely populated cities of Mosul and Raqqa under heavy assault by air and land. But there are also indications that under President Trump, protections for civilians on the battlefield may have been lessened, with immediate and disastrous results.

Whatever the explanation, more civilians are dying. Airwars estimates that the minimum approximate number of civilian deaths from Coalition attacks will have doubled under Trump’s leadership within his first six months in office. Britain, France, Australia, and Belgium all remain active within the campaign, though unlike the US they each deny civilian casualties.

In one well-publicized incident in Mosul, the US admits it was responsible for killing more than 100 civilians in a single strike during March. But hundreds more have died from Coalition attacks in the chaos of fighting there.

“Remarkably, when I interview families at camps who have just fled the fighting, the first thing they complain about is not the three horrific years they spent under ISIL, or the last months of no food or clean water, but the American airstrikes,” said Belkis Wille, Iraq researcher for Human Rights Watch.

“Many told me that they survived such hardship, and almost made it out with the families, only to lose all their loved ones in a strike before they had time to flee.”

Across the border in Raqqa, where the US carries out nearly all the Coalition's airstrikes and has deployed artillery, the civilian toll is less publicly known but even more startling. In the three months before American-backed forces breached the city’s limits in early June, Airwars tracked more than 700 likely civilian deaths in the vicinity of the self-declared ISIL capital.

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