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At least 800 civilians killed in US-led strikes in Iraq, Syria: Pentagon

Thursday, 30 November 2017 1:30 PM [ Last Update: Thursday, 30 November 2017 1:39 PM ]

This photo taken on September 5, 2017, shows smoke billowing out following a US-led coalition airstrike in the western al-Daraiya neighborhood of the embattled northern Syrian city of Raqqah. (Photo by AFP)

The US-led coalition purportedly fighting the Daesh terrorist group has confirmed that hundreds of people have lost their lives as a result of aerial attacks by the military alliance against the alleged positions of the Takfiri outfit in Iraq and neighboring Syria ever since the campaign began in 2014.

The Pentagon, in a statement released on Thursday, stated that at least 801 civilians have been killed between August 2014 and October 2017, noting that five more aerial attacks in Syria have resulted in 15 additional civilian deaths over the past month.

The figure provided by the United States Department of Defense is far lower than those announced by monitoring groups.

The London-based Airwars organization, which tracks civilian deaths in US-led airstrikes, says a total of at least 5,961 civilians have been killed as a result of the attacks in Iraq and Syria.

The so-called Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) reported on November 23 that 2,759 civilians, including 644 minors and 470 women, had been killed in US-led aerial attacks against civilian areas in Syria over the past 38 months.

The Britain-based monitoring group added that the US-led air raids had claimed the lives of 98 people, including four children and as many women, between October 23 and November 23 this year.

The SOHR went on to say that the civilian fatalities had been mostly recorded in the northern provinces of Hasakah, Raqqah, Aleppo and Idlib in addition to the eastern province of Dayr al-Zawr.

The US-led coalition has been conducting airstrikes against what are said to be Daesh targets inside Syria since September 2014 without any authorization from the Damascus government or a UN mandate.

The military alliance has repeatedly been accused of targeting and killing civilians. It has also been largely incapable of achieving its declared goal of destroying Daesh.

On November 12, Syria’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Expatriates criticized the so-called human rights advocates for turning a blind eye to the atrocities the US-led coalition is perpetrating in Raqqah and Dayr al-Zawr.

The file photo shows a view of the Syrian Foreign Ministry.

It also called on the United Nations Security Council to “shoulder its main responsibility of preserving international peace and security and take immediate action to stop the brutal crimes committed by the illegal coalition against the innocent civilians and prevent more crimes from happening.”

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