The United States military said Wednesday its airstrikes in Iraq and Syria killed 64 civilians and injured 8 others during the past year.
The new numbers released by US Central Command bring the official total number of civilians killed since the operation began in August 2014 to 119 with another 37 injured.
Rights groups and monitors say the real number is much higher. Amnesty International reported in October that airstrikes by the US-led coalition appeared to have killed more than 300 people in Syria alone during the past two years.
Pentagon data shows US forces are responsible for about two-thirds of all coalition airstrikes.
Wednesday’s new casualty figures do not include an airstrike in July in the northern Syrian city of Manbij, where residents and rights groups said more than 50 civilians were killed. The US military is still investigating that attack.
Central Command spokesman Col. John Thomas said there are teams that work to prevent “unintended civilian casualties.”
“Sometimes civilians bear the brunt of military action but we do all we can to minimize those occurrences even at the cost of sometimes missing the chance to strike valid targets in real time,” he said in a statement.
Since the airstrikes began — first in Iraq in August 2014, then in Syria a month later — there have been more than 16,000 by the coalition at a cost of about $12 million per day. In October, the coalition reported an average of about 10 airstrikes each day in both Iraq and Syria.
Source: Agencies
