The Pentagon is reportedly set to announce that it has killed and injured 29 civilians in at least 14 incidents during airstrikes against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria.
Until last week, the U.S. military had only admitted to killing six civilians in two incidents, but is expected to reveal 15 innocent casualties and 14 injuries over the last year, The Daily Beast reported.
The new admissions will bring the total to 21 civilian casualties the U.S. has admitted killing in 16 incidents.
If true, that’s a sevenfold increase in the number of civilian casualties the Pentagon has acknowledged since the airstrike campaign began 17 months ago.
The U.S. military has led more than 7,500 airstrikes over the course of the campaign against the terrorist group and the civilian death toll could increase.
Details of the casualties will be released in three batches. Last week, the military detailed five incidents last year between April 12 and July 4 that had claimed eight lives and left three others injured. The Pentagon is set to acknowledge five more incidents Friday, and next week will announce four additional cases, The Daily Beast reported.
None of the 14 cases resulted in the death of children the military concluded.
As of Aug. 28, the U.S. military had investigated 71 allegations of civilian casualties.
The 14 new cases fall into two categories. In some instances, civilians appeared at a strike site minutes before a bombing when there is not enough time to call off the attack. In other cases, the pilots conducting the strikes realized after the fact that the person killed was not a suspected jihadi fighter.
“A lot of these were self-reported by our fighters,” one defense official told The Daily Beast.
The new admissions come after the U.N. released a report this week claiming 19,000 civilians had been killed in Iraq alone — most at the hands of the Islamic State, not the coalition fighting the terrorists.
• Kellan Howell can be reached at khowell@washingtontimes.com.
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