US strikes killed 188 civilians in Syria, Iraq: US military
US-led strikes purportedly targeting Daesh terrorists in Syria and Iraq have led to the deaths of at least 188 civilians since 2014, the US military says.
In a statement on Monday, the Combined Joint Task Force said it was still assessing what it called unintentional deaths from four strikes in 2016 and another one in 2015.
The figures came in the task force’s monthly assessment of civilian casualties from the US coalition's operations in the two countries; however, it was far below those estimated by outside groups.
Air Wars, which monitors civilian deaths from international air strikes in the region, has estimated that at least 2,100 civilians have been killed in Iraq and Syria during the same period.
"Although the Coalition takes extraordinary efforts to strike military targets in a manner that minimizes the risk of civilian casualties, in some incidents casualties are unavoidable," the task force said in its statement.
There were also 16 new reports of possible civilian deaths in November 2016, of which five were deemed credible and showed 15 unintended civilian deaths, it added.
In addition, a US-led strike on a van of Daesh elements on December 29 is still being investigated, with officials later determining it occurred in a hospital parking lot.
Overall, the US and its coalition partners conducted 17,005 strikes against purported Daesh targets as of December 30, with a total of 10,738 in Iraq and 6,267 in Syria, US military data shows.
According to the US Defense Department, mid-September airstrikes killed dozens of Syrian soldiers in the country's eastern province of Dayr al-Zawr, with officials saying later that the attacks were based on wrong intelligence.
On December 9, at least 90 Iraqi soldiers were killed when US Air Force fighter jets struck their position in Mosul.
The US military data shows that operation against Daesh in Iraq and Syria has cost $10 billion since 2014.
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