New Delhi:
The US military issued a statement that US-led strikes aimed against the terror group, Islamic State ‘unintentionally’ killed 352 civilians since the offensive began in 2014.
However, the tally from the Combined Joint Task Force did not include findings from an investigation the coalition said it had launched into one allegedly particularly deadly strike on March 17 in west Mosul.
Coalition forces probably had a role in those casualties, US General Stephen Townsend had said. Operation Inherent Resolve, the coalition fighting the Islamic State group in Iraq and Syria in a statement released on Sunday said that 42 reports of civilian fatalities were still under review.
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The statement also said that coalition strikes from November 2016 to March 2017 had killed 45 civilians. However, in Mosul, 26 civilians have been killed in three separate strikes in early March.
The US-led strikes in Iraq and Syria from August 2014 to date had not previously been publicly announced, which caused causalities of 80 civilians, the Pentagon said in a statement.
However, the groups that are monitoring the situation said that the total number of causalities are much higher than it is being announced by the Pentagon.
The coalition insisted that the IS group is using civilians as human shields, which is making difficult for the US military to avoid civilian causalities.
With inputs from PTI.
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