US-led forces acknowledge killing 61 more civilians in Iraq, Syria
madaresharghi The US-led coalition said on Friday it had confirmed another 61 likely civilian deaths caused by its strikes in Iraq and Syria, raising to 685 the number of civilians it has acknowledged killing since the conflict began. The coalition said in a statement that during July, it had investigated 37 reports of civilian casualties. […]
The US-led coalition said on Friday it had confirmed another 61 likely civilian deaths caused by its strikes in Iraq and Syria, raising to 685 the number of civilians it has acknowledged killing since the conflict began.
The coalition said in a statement that during July, it had investigated 37 reports of civilian casualties. It found that only 13 of the reports were credible and there were an estimated 61 unintentional civilian deaths, Reuters wrote.
The coalition is investigating another 455 reports of civilian casualties caused by its artillery or airstrikes, the statement said. It has now acknowledged at least 685 civilian deaths due to its air and artillery strikes since the conflict began in August 2014.
The deadliest incident investigated in July was a March 14 strike near Mosul. That strike is believed to have killed 27 civilians in an adjacent structure, the statement said.
The US-led coalition has been conducting airstrikes against what are said to be Daesh targets in Iraq and Syria since 2014.
The military alliance has repeatedly been accused of targeting and killing civilians. It has also been largely incapable of fulfilling its declared aim of destroying Daesh.
The Syrian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Expatriates, in two separate letters sent to UN Secretary General António Guterres and rotating President of the UN Security Council Amr Abdellatif Aboulatta on August 24, stated that the US-led coalition was perpetrating war crimes and crimes against humanity through aerial bombardment of residential neighborhoods.
The Syrian Foreign Ministry also stressed that the military alliance was using internationally-banned white phosphorus munitions in flagrant violation of international law and the Charter of the United Nations.