Civilian toll mounts in US, Russian strikes: monitor

By Michael Hernandez

WASHINGTON (AA) - Thousands of civilians have been killed in U.S.-led coalition and Russian airstrikes last year, a monitoring group said Tuesday.

Airwars said it saw a "dramatic jump" in reported civilian deaths last year stemming from 445 coalition "incidents" in 2016. In all, coalition strikes killed between 1,237 and 1,901 non-combatants in Syria and Iraq where the U.S.-led alliance is carrying out a widespread campaign to defeat Daesh.

That's a 70 percent jump from 2015, Airwars said, as it added that reported injuries tripled in what it called "an indication both of an intensifying campaign and the increasingly urban nature of the Coalition’s air war against ISIL".

To date, the coalition has acknowledged only 188 civilian deaths in its campaign which began in 2014.

All admitted civilian deaths have been the result of U.S. airstrikes, Airwars said.

The coalition's airstrikes in Mosul and Raqqah have resulted in "unprecedented levels" of reported civilian deaths, it said, with more than 50 events occurring in the first two weeks of this year alone.

Meanwhile, Russia's intervention in Syria on behalf of President Bashar al-Assad's forces "led to significant civilian fatalities".

"Civilian deaths from Russian actions in 2016 far outpaced those from Coalition actions," Airwars said.

The sheer number of reported civilian deaths only allowed the monitor to assess the first four months of last year, and it said from January until the end of April between 1,140 to 1,564 civilians were killed.

That number is likely to grow significantly as Russia's air campaign in eastern Aleppo intensified dramatically in the last quarter of 2016.