The U.S.-Led Fight Against ISIS Has Killed Far More Civilians Than It Admits

[Agschmid]

“America killed us, and it said ‘we didn’t kill civilians,’” a relative of one victim said. BuzzFeed News speaks to survivors on the border.

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ISKENDERUN, Turkey — The little girl was home in northern Syria at around 8:30 on a recent summer night when the missile streaked down from the sky. Her uncle, 21-year-old Talha Amouri, was outside when the explosion ripped through the house, knocking him off his feet. He dug through the wreckage for hour after frantic hour, pulling out members of his family. He found five of his nieces — ages 8, 7, 6, 5, and 3 — dead. But the youngest, 2-year-old Nariman, clung to life, her arms locked around her mother, who had also survived. Nariman was rushed to a hospital across the nearby border with Turkey, in the seaside city of Iskenderun, where she now lies helpless beneath a web of tubes and bandages.

“The girl is close to death right now,” Talha said outside the hospital on a muggy afternoon last week, his eyes welling with tears. He had been keeping vigil there around the clock, waiting to learn whether his niece would live or die.

Nariman’s fate has been shared by countless children in a civil war that has seen tens of thousands of civilians massacred by the Syrian government’s airstrikes. But in her case there was one crucial difference: According to witnesses and monitoring groups, the missile was fired by the U.S.-led military coalition whose jets now cut through Syria’s skies.

Nearly one year after the Obama administration launched its campaign of airstrikes to target ISIS and other extremists in Syria, claims of civilian casualties are piling up. The Syrian Network for Human Rights, a local monitoring group, said there have been 242 civilian casualties from strikes by the U.S.-dominated coalition bombing the country, while the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights also puts the civilian death toll at more than 200. Airwars, a U.K.-based project to collect and evaluate claims of civilian casualties in Syria, has identified 86 events during which coalition-inflicted civilian deaths are alleged, said Chris Woods, the investigative journalist who runs it. Of those, he said, 53 incidents had at least two credible sources and warranted further investigation. These incidents alone accounted for between 280 and 340 reported civilian deaths, he said.

Source.

[6chars]

1. what should the u.s. do differently?

[leveymg]

4. Go after the ISIS/AQ funders in Saudi Arabia/GCC countries

Arrest them, try them, jail them, seize their hundreds of billions in assets and impose sanctions on the states that protect them.

[Mnemosyne]

2. K&R because this matters more than tRump's hair. nt

[Agschmid]

3. Yes it is.

[pampango]

5. "The U.S. takes care to avoid hitting civilians, while the government of Syrian President Bashar

al-Assad actively targets them."

The U.S. government’s perceived silence on civilian casualties has helped to blur the line between its airstrikes and the Syrian government’s in the minds of many Syrians, especially grieving relatives. “America killed us, and it said we didn’t kill civilians,” Nariman’s uncle, Talha Amouri, said.

Sitting in the crowded cafeteria beside the Iskenderun hospital’s entrance, he said there were victims of Syrian government airstrikes inside too. “So what’s the difference between the regime and the Americans?” he asked.

It’s an unfair comparison: The U.S. takes care to avoid hitting civilians, while the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad actively targets them.

But confusion over civilian casualties among Syrians highlights the difficult situation the U.S. faces as it shares the skies with Assad’s air force. The Syrian government hasn’t approved coalition strikes, but it also hasn’t moved to stop them. Sometimes, each side bombs an area on the same day — the coalition striking military targets, the Syrian military often attacking civilians.

Great article. Thanks for posting, Agschmid.