64 civilians killed in anti-IS airstrikes: US military

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region (Kurdistan24) – Airstrikes by US warplanes and other nation members of the International Anti-Islamic State (IS) Coalition killed at least 64 civilians in Iraq and Syria according to a Thursday-released US military assessment.

Civilian casualties confirmed by the US Central Command (CENTCOM) officials occurred in the result of 24 airstrikes conducted between the dates Nov. 20, 2015, and Sep. 10, 2016.

In a reviewed list of the airstrikes, CENTCOM also said coalition warplanes wounded eight other civilians in both countries.

The data showed the majority of civilian casualties occurred in places where there was fighting between the IS and forces opposing it.

A spokesperson for the CENTCOM, Colonel John J. Thomas, said in a Defense Department news release the coalition had teams “who work full-time 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,” Thomas added.

An October report from Amnesty International read that about 300 civilians had been killed in 11 coalition attacks in the past two years whereas the Pentagon puts the number at 119, Reuters reported.

US President Barack Obama authorized airstrikes against IS targets in Iraq in August 2014 as the group overran the Kurdish-Ezidi town of Shingal.

Non-Muslim residents in Shingal faced a genocidal campaign by militants who separated men and women to massacre the former and sexually enslave the latter.

By that time, the IS, which managed to capture large swathes of territory in western and northern Iraq in an unanticipated blitzkrieg, was already threatening the Kurdistan Region’s capital, Erbil, where the US has military and diplomatic posts.

In September 2014, with the participation of other European and Gulf countries’ warplanes, the US-led air campaign extended into Syria where Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) were resisting a fresh IS onslaught on the town of Kobani with the Turkish border.

Coalition aircrafts provide air support to the Iraqi army, Kurdistan Region’s Peshmerga Forces, the YPG, the Kurdish-dominated Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), and some factions of the Free Syrian Army in the fight against the IS.

The US had conducted 12,354 airstrikes against the IS as of Nov. 2, with 6,992 in Iraq and 5,362 in Syria, according to US military data.

Editing by Karzan Sulaivany