The US-Led Coalition Confirmed Killing Civilians

On Sep 12, 2017

The US-led coalition claimed responsibility for the massacre of 61 civilians in Syria and Iraq calling it “unintentional civilian deaths.”

Since the beginning of its intervention in battles in Iraq and Syria against ISIS, the US, along with its allies, has acknowledged killing civilians unintentionally for many times. Overall, around 685 civilian deaths has been acknowledged by the coalition since 2014.

In a statement issued on Friday, the coalition accepted some 13 reports in July about the civilian deaths caused by the US air strikes. The statement, however, failed to confirm the accuracy of a majority of other reports and said “13 were accessed to be credible resulting in 61 unintentional civilian deaths.”

The speech also said that another pack of 455 reports on the saga is being investigated by coalition.

To date, based on information available, CJTF-OIR [Combined Joint Task Force – Operation Inherent Resolve] assesses that, it is more likely than not, at least 685 civilians have been unintentionally killed by Coalition strikes since the start of Operation Inherent Resolve.

The deadliest strike, acknowledged by the coalition, took place on March 14 near Mosul in which 27 civilians were killed. It occurred after the coalition claimed to have targeted an ISIS position. “During a strike on ISIS fighters engaging partner forces from a fighting position, it was assessed that 27 civilians in an adjacent structure were unintentionally killed,” the coalition said.

The UN human rights officials expressed deep concerns over the high rate of civilian deaths caused by the US-led strikes. Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein called the excuses made by the coalition officials unacceptable and stated it is not “respecting the principles of international humanitarian law in its intense airstrikes.”

“Given the extremely high number of reports of civilian casualties this month and the intensity of the airstrikes on Raqqa, coupled with ISIL’s use of civilians as human shields, I am deeply concerned that civilians – who should be protected at all times – are paying an unacceptable price and that forces involved in battling ISIL are losing sight of the ultimate goal of this battle,” Zeid said .