WASHINGTON: At least 352 civilians have been killed in US-led strikes against Daesh 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 airstrikes.
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 Daesh 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.
In a separate statement, the Pentagon said a US service member in Iraq was killed on Saturday by an explosive device outside Mosul.
The Pentagon said the service member died from wounds sustained in an “explosive device blast.”
This is the fifth combat death in Iraq since the US launched military operations against Daesh in August 2014.
Daesh began growing in power in Iraq in early 2014 in the country’s west and in the summer of 2014 swept across much of the country’s north.
Since the beginning of the US campaign against Daesh in Iraq, the number of US troops in the country has steadily grown.
There are now more US forces in Iraq than any time since the 2011 US withdrawal, marking an intensifying war as Iraqi forces and the US-led coalition work to push Daesh out of the last pockets of territory the extremists control in Iraq.
Saturday’s incident marked the second American military fatality since the start of the Mosul operation against Daesh more than six months ago.
In October, just days after the operation to retake Mosul was formally launched, Navy chief petty officer Jason C. Finan, 34, of Anaheim, California, died of wounds sustained in a roadside bomb attack north of Mosul.
Finan was part of a team of advisers assisting Iraq’s Kurdish fighters known as the Peshmerga.
The Pentagon has acknowledged more than 100 US special operations forces are operating with Iraqi units in and around Mosul, with hundreds more playing a support role in staging bases farther from the front lines.
352 ‘civilians killed by US-led coalition airstrikes since 2014’
352 ‘civilians killed by US-led coalition airstrikes since 2014’
UN rights chief Shocked by ‘unbearable’ Darfur atrocities
- Mediation efforts have failed to produce a ceasefire, even after international outrage intensified last year with reports of mass killings, rape, and abductions during the RSF’s takeover of El-Fasher in Darfur
PORT SUDAN: Nearly three years of war have put the Sudanese people through “hell,” the UN’s rights chief said on Sunday, blasting the vast sums spent on advanced weaponry at the expense of humanitarian aid and the recruitment of child soldiers.
Since April 2023, Sudan has been gripped by a conflict between the army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces that has left tens of thousands of people dead and around 11 million displaced.
Speaking in Port Sudan during his first wartime visit, UN Human Rights commissioner Volker Turk said the population had endured “horror and hell,” calling it “despicable” that funds that “should be used to alleviate the suffering of the population” are instead spent on advanced weapons, particularly drones.
More than 21 million people are facing acute food insecurity, and two-thirds of Sudan’s population is in urgent need of humanitarian aid, according to the UN.
In addition to the world’s largest hunger and displacement crisis, Sudan is also facing “the increasing militarization of society by all parties to the conflict, including through the arming of civilians and recruitment and use of children,” Turk added.
He said he had heard testimony of “unbearable” atrocities from survivors of attacks in Darfur, and warned of similar crimes unfolding in the Kordofan region — the current epicenter of the fighting.
Testimony of these atrocities must be heard by “the commanders of this conflict and those who are arming, funding and profiting from this war,” he said.
Mediation efforts have failed to produce a ceasefire, even after international outrage intensified last year with reports of mass killings, rape, and abductions during the RSF’s takeover of El-Fasher in Darfur.
“We must ensure that the perpetrators of these horrific violations face justice regardless of the affiliation,” Turk said on Sunday, adding that repeated attacks on civilian infrastructure could constitute “war crimes.”
He called on both sides to “cease intolerable attacks against civilian objects that are indispensable to the civilian population, including markets, health facilities, schools and shelters.”
Turk again warned on Sunday that crimes similar to those seen in El-Fasher could recur in volatile Kordofan, where the RSF has advanced, besieging and attacking several key cities.
Hundreds of thousands face starvation across the region, where more than 65,000 people have been displaced since October, according to the latest UN figures.
