US-Led Coalition Admits Killing About 940 Civilians in Operations in Syria, Iraq

Sputnik News

13:03 28.06.2018(updated 13:45 28.06.2018)

MOSCOW (Sputnik) - Strikes carried out by the US-led coalition fighting against the Daesh* terrorist group in Iraq and Syria have claimed the lives of more than 930 civilians since August 2014, Operation Inherent Resolve's Combined Joint Task Force said in a report on Thursday.

According to the document, the coalition conducted a total of 29,569 strikes from August 2014-May 2018, unintentionally killing 939 civilians since the start of the operations in Iraq and Syria.

Previously, the coalition's statistics claimed that up to 900 civilians had been killed by its strikes since 2014. However, London-based NGO Airwars has estimated the US and its allies are responsible for at least 9,600 civilian deaths in their campaign against Daesh in Syria and Iraq.

The US and its allies have been fighting the Daesh terror group in Syria since 2014 without the approval of Damascus or a mandate from the UN Security Council. At the moment, about 2,000 US troops are deployed in Syria. For its part, the Syrian government has called on Washington to pull its forces out of Syria, considering their presence to be a violation of Syrian sovereignty.

* Daesh, also known as IS, ISIL, ISIS, is a terrorist group, banned in Russia

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