U.S. military officials acknowledged for the first time on Tuesday that the more than 1,600 bombings launched on Iraq and Syria by the U.S. and allies over the past five months may have led to “a few” civilian casualties.
Analysts, however, say that such an admission is not only an undercounting of civilian deaths and wounds from airstrikes, but a far cry from the reckoning needed to account for the true human cost of U.S. military intervention in the Middle East.
“This makes me furious that the U.S. military is trying to keep moral high ground because they are investigating a few cases,” Raed Jarrar, Policy Impact Coordinator for the American Friends Service Committee, told Common Dreams. “It is a joke.”
Speaking at a media briefing on Tuesday, Pentagon press secretary Rear Adm. John Kirby said that there are “credible allegations of possible civilian casualties” in the U.S.-led war on ISIS. He claimed that the number of civilians killed and wounded in Iraq is extremely low, but offered no details or information to confirm this claim or the location of the attacks.
“I would point you to Central Command,” Kirby told reporters inquiring about locations of specific incidents. “I know that they are actively investigating what they believe to be at least a few incidents of civilian causalities that they think, you know, warrant further investigation, that they have found credible to investigate.”
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