The
US-led coalition has acknowledged that another 51 civilians were
killed during its airstrikes against purported positions of the Daesh
Takfiri terrorist group across Iraq and Syria, bringing the total
toll from the raids to at least 786.
The
coalition said in a statement on Thursday that during September, it
assessed 127 reports and that the 51 additional deaths occurred in 16
incidents going back as far as February.
Independent
monitors have time and again challenged such reports and revealed
that the US-led military campaign has significantly inflicted more
civilian casualties. According to the Airwars, a UK-based non-profit
monitoring group, at least 5,637 civilians have been killed by
coalition strikes.
The
co-called Syrian Observatory for Human Rights has recently said that
a total of 42,234 documented airstrikes in the country resulted in a
minimum estimate of some 7,000 civilian deaths by the US-led
coalition between 2014 and 2017.
The
US-led coalition has been conducting airstrikes against what are said
to be Daesh targets inside Syria since September 2014 without any
authorization from the Damascus government or a UN mandate. Such air
raids began in Iraq in August of the same year.
The
airstrikes, however, have on many occasions resulted in civilian
casualties and failed to fulfill their declared aim of countering
terrorism.
Russia
said recently that the US wiped the Syrian city of Raqqah "off
the face of the earth" with carpet bombing in the same way the
United States and Britain bombed Germany's Dresden in 1945.
In a
statement released on October 22, the Russian Defense Ministry
accused the West of having rushed to provide aid to Raqqah to cover
up evidence of its own crimes.
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