The number of civilians killed by the US-led coalition fighting the Islamic State group in Iraq and Syria tripled in 2017, as battles raged in jihadist-held urban<\/p>\n
areas, a monitor said Friday.<\/p>\n
Between 3,923 and 6,102 non-combatants were killed in the two countries, said Airwars, a London-based journalist collective that compiles data from public<\/p>\n
sources.<\/p>\n
That is sharply up from its estimate of the previous year\u2019s toll of between 1,243 and 1,904.<\/p>\n
The coalition backed Iraqi forces in a gruelling battle last year to oust IS from second city Mosul, as well as supporting a Kurdish-dominated force that seized<\/p>\n
Syria\u2019s Raqa city from the jihadists after months of fighting.<\/p>\n
Airwars said the surge in deaths was likely partly caused by intense fighting in urban areas.<\/p>\n
But it also said the administration of US President Donald Trump may be partly to blame.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis toll coincided with the start of the Trump presidency, which has declared the conflict against ISIS to be a \u2018war of annihilation\u2019,\u201d it said, using an alternative<\/p>\n
name for IS.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe scaling back by the new administration of some measures aimed at protecting civilians\u201d may have contributed to the \u201csteep increase\u201d in casualties, it said.<\/p>\n
Airwars said the coalition had carried out some 11,573 artillery and air strikes, some 50 percent up on the previous year. More than 70 percent were in Syria.<\/p>\n
It said 766 attacks last year wounded some 2,443 civilians in both countries.<\/p>\n
The monitor, which also tracks casualties of Russian operations in Syria, said coalition-linked civilian deaths in 2017 had \u201cfar\u201d outnumbered those attributed to<\/p>\n
Russia.<\/p>\n
It said the toll for civilians killed in coalition strikes in Syria had quadrupled compared to 2016, with the battle for Raqa killing at least 1,450 civilians, while in Iraq<\/p>\n
deaths were up by 87 percent.<\/p>\n
Between the start of the battle for Mosul in October 2016 and the announcement of its \u201cliberation\u201d in July, between 1,066 and 1,579 civilians were killed by<\/p>\n
coalition raids there, Airwars said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The number of civilians killed by the US-led coalition fighting the Islamic State group in Iraq and Syria tripled in 2017, as battles raged in jihadist-held urban areas, a monitor said Friday. Between 3,923 and 6,102 non-combatants were killed in the two countries, said Airwars, a London-based journalist collective that compiles data from public sources. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":19294,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[87],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19293","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19293","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19293"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19293\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19295,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19293\/revisions\/19295"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19294"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19293"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19293"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19293"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}