At least 352 civilians have been killed in US-led strikes against Islamic State targets in Iraq and Syria since the operation began in 2014, the US military said in a statement on Sunday.
At least 352 civilians have been killed in US-led strikes against Islamic State targets in Iraq and Syria since the operation began in 2014, the US military said in a statement on Sunday.
The Combined Joint Task Force, in its monthly assessment of civilian casualties from the US coalition’s operations against the militant group, said it was still assessing 42 reports of civilian deaths.
It added that 45 civilians were killed between November 2016 and March 2017.
It reported 80 civilian deaths from August 2014 to the present that had not previously been announced.
The report included 26 deaths from three separate strikes in March.
The military’s official tally is far below those of other outside groups.
Monitoring group Airwars said more than 3,000 civilians have been killed by coalition air strikes.
Included in Sunday’s tally were 14 civilians killed by a strike in March that set off a secondary explosion, as well as 10 civilians who were killed in a strike on Islamic State headquarters the same month.
‘We regret the unintentional loss of civilian lives … and express our deepest sympathies to the families and others affected by these strikes, ‘ the Pentagon said in a statement.
Earlier this month, Human Rights Watch accused the US military of failing to take ‘necessary precautions’ to prevent civilians deaths in a strike on a Syrian mosque in March that killed dozens of people.
The March 16 strike in the village of opposition-held Al-Jineh in northern Aleppo province killed 49 people, mostly civilians, according to the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
‘United States forces appear to have failed to take necessary precautions to avoid civilian casualties, ‘ in the strike, Human Rights Watch said in a report.
The Pentagon said the strike targeted a meeting of senior al-Qaeda leaders and denied a mosque had been hit in the attack.
But it launched a casualty ‘credibility assessment’ after reviewing public and classified information.
HRW said it had interviewed 14 people with firsthand knowledge of the strike, and worked with organisations to analyse imagery of the attack and reconstruct the assault.
‘The US seems to have gotten several things fundamentally wrong in this attack, and dozens of civilians paid the price, ‘ said Ole Solvang, HRW’s deputy emergencies director.
‘The US authorities need to figure out what went wrong, start doing their homework before they launch attacks, and make sure it doesn’t happen again.’
Also last month, around 230 people – mostly women and children – who were being used as ‘human shields’ by ISIS were killed when an airstrike by the US-led coalition triggered a huge explosion in Mosul.
Civil defense agency officials said three buildings in the Jadida neighborhood of west Mosul collapsed and it is believed the airstrike set off explosives in a lorry being used by ISIS militants.
The incident reportedly happened on March 17 but details began to emerge a week later.
One man who survived the blast told reporters: ‘The entire neighborhood was fleeing because of missiles so people had taken refuge here.
‘I didn’t know if it was a shelter. I didn’t know we couldn’t go there. My entire family is inside, 27 people. We pulled only one of them out. We don’t know about the rest.’
