Civilian deaths skyrocketed in final U.S., coalition push against ISIS in Iraq, Syria

Civilian injuries and deaths tied to airstrikes by the U.S.-led coalition battling to push the Islamic State out of Iraq and Syria skyrocketed in the weeks and months leading to the liberation of the terror group’s main bastions in both countries.

Civilian casualties tied to the American and coalition air war against the terror group known as ISIS jumped from 3,923 in 2016 to an estimated 6,102 in the last year, Airwars.com, a nonprofit research group focused on tracking civilian casualties tied to the offensive, reported Thursday.

In the run-up to the eventual liberation of ISIS’s northern Iraqi stronghold of Mosul and its self-styled capital of Raqqa last year, civilian casualties suffered in 2017 alone made up for 65 percent of all civilian deaths suffered throughout the four-year war against the terror group.

“While the Coalition’s own overall casualty estimates for the year are far lower, the trends are similar,” analysts with the nonprofit research group wrote in the recent report. Coalition commanders acknowledged that 93 “events” involving U.S. airstrikes in 2017 resulted in civilian casualties, which was an increase over the 53 strikes commanders say ended in non-combatant deaths.

At its height, American and coalition aircraft dropped more bombs inside the Islamic State-held Syrian city of Raqqa in August than U.S. warplanes fired on Taliban and other extremist groups across all of Afghanistan during the same time frame, according to a September review by Airwars.com.

Just over 6,000 bombs, shells and missiles targeting ISIS fighters were fired into Raqqa in August alone — which Airwars officials say resulted in 400 civilian casualties — a ten-fold increase of air and artillery strikes launched in the anti-ISIS offensive compared to the earlier month.