British air strikes in Iraq ‘may have killed civilians’

British strikes in Iraq may have killed civilians while targeting the Daesh group, the BBC reported today.

It was “impossible” to conduct a strike in highly populated areas in Iraq without killing civilians, a source inside the coalition fighting Daesh told the BBC. The source has seen evidence that Britain has killed civilians “on several occasions”.

“To suggest they have not – as has been done – is nonsense,” the source continued.

Describing one attack on 9 January last year when a Royal Air Force (RAF) Tornado jet executed a missile in eastern Mosul causing a secondary explosion, the source said this “almost certainly” killing two civilians.

When @amnesty raised concerns about @CJTFOIR civilian casualties in Mosul, British Army General Rupert Jones, called us “disrespectful” and claimed that we “have no understanding of the brutality of warfare”. His own colleagues are now echoing our findings https://t.co/DjHwnl8zut

— Conor Fortune (@WritesRights) May 2, 2018

3,700 bombs dropped in Syria and Iraq

But the Ministry of Defence has said that there is “no evidence” that its campaign in Iraq has caused any civilian casualties. The MoD claims “everything possible” is done to minimise civilian casualties, insinuating that some deaths may have taken place without acknowledgment.

Last year Airwars revealed that at least 80 civilians had been confirmed killed by non-US allies in Iraq and Syria – tho none will accept responsibility. Based on briefings, we suspect the UK was responsible for some of those deaths https://t.co/sum2sqLrk8

— Airwars (@airwars) May 2, 2018

Airwars, a monitoring group which has tracked coalition strikes in Syria and Iraq claims it’s likely that between 1,066 and 1,579 civilians died in Mosul alone.

Only the United States and Australia have accepted that some civilians have been killed in their operations. The UK government claims that not a single civilian casualty has occurred in its operations in Syria or Iraq.

Syria has been locked in a vicious civil war since early 2011, when President Bashar Al-Assad’s regime cracked down on pro-democracy protests. Since then, more than 400,000 people have been killed and in excess of ten million displaced, according to the United Nations.

The coalition targeting Daesh has executed 14,214 strikes in Iraq and 15,065 in Syria according to Airwars. At least 6,259 civilians have been killed by the coalition, the organisation added.

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