An F/A-18F Super Hornet lands on the U.S. Navy's super carrier USS Dwight D.
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Past
Month 'Deadliest on Record' for Syrian Civilians Killed in US-Led Air Strikes
By Bethan McKernan, The
Independent
26 May 17
Total of 225 people, including 36 women and 44 children, killed by
friendly fire in the last four-week period, monitor says
Air
strikes carried out by the US and its coalition partners in Syria have killed
the highest number of civilians on record since the bombing campaign began, a
war monitor has said.
A
total of 225 civilians, including 36 women and 44 children, were killed in the
period between 23 April to 23 May, the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human
Rights said.
The
toll is the highest number of recorded deaths since the international air
campaign against Isis began in September 2014.
“The
past month of operations is the highest civilian toll since the coalition began
bombing Syria,” Observatory head Rami Abdel Rahman told AFP news agency.
“There
has been a very big escalation.”
At
least 122 Isis fighters and eight members of militias loyal to the Syrian
government were also killed in the same period, the Observatory said.
The
strikes are conducted without the consent of the Syrian government, with which
the US does not have official diplomatic ties, and have long been criticised by
Damascus and Syria’s allies in Moscow and Tehran for causing unnecessary loss
of life.
One
incident in 2016 a strike designed to take out Isis weapons depots and other
positions near Deir Ez Zour in the north of the country accidentally targeted
Syrian army positions instead, killing 62 soldiers.
However,
since US President Donald Trump entered office in January this year there has
been a marked uptick in civilian deaths in bombing operations against Isis
across both Syria and neighbouring Iraq.
In
March, the US was accused of killing around 300 civilians alone after one
strike which hit a mosque in Aleppo province and two incidents in the fight for
Isis-controlled neighbourhoods of the Iraqi city of Mosul.
Earlier
this month, the US military said that coalition air strikes in Iraq and Syria
had ”unintentionally“ killed 352 civilians since the campaign began, but rights
groups have blasted the estimate as too low, saying the US is guilty of not
taking “sufficient precautions” to avoid civilian deaths.
SOHR’s
own estimate is that 1,481 people, among them 319 children, have been killed by
US-led air operations since 2014.
US
investigations into the three March incidents are still underway.
The
Pentagon has denied there has been any significant change in US-led bombing
strategy since former President Barack Obama left office.
On
Friday, however, US Defence Secretary Jim Mattis said Mr Trump has “directed a
tactical shift from shoving Isis out of safe locations in an attrition fight to
surrounding the enemy in their strongholds so we can annihilate [them].
”The
intent is to prevent the return home of escaped foreign fighters,“ he added.
Isis
now holds onto just a fraction of the territory under its control at the height
of the group’s powers in 2014.
Twin
US-backed campaigns to oust fighters from their last urban strongholds - Raqqa
in Syria and Mosul in Iraq - are underway, led by local forces on the ground
assisted by 5,000 US military advisors.
The
complex Syrian civil war has killed almost 500,000 people, the UN says, and is
now in its seventh year.
C 2015 Reader Supported News
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"The master class
has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles.
The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject
class has had nothing to gain and everything to lose--especially their
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