U.S.-led coalition counts 229 civilian deaths before Mosul strike

WASHINGTON — Facing mounting pressure over civilian casualties in U.S. airstrikes, the U.S.-led coalition fighting the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria said Saturday that it was likely that at least 229 civilians had been unintentionally killed by its operations since they began in August 2014.

In February, the last month covered by the report and the first full month of the Trump administration, four such civilians were killed, the coalition said. The assessment, issued monthly, therefore does not include the March 17 strike against a building in Mosul in which scores if not hundreds of civilians were killed, according to Iraqi witnesses. That strike is under investigation.

‘Take the issue … seriously’

The coalition’s overall count is far less than estimates by some human rights groups. Airwars, a nongovernment organization that monitors reports of civilian casualties in international airstrikes, has asserted that at least 2,831 civilians are likely to have been killed as of March 28 by the coalition’s air attacks since August 2014.

The worries about civilian casualties have grown as Iraqi forces push to take western Mosul from the Islamic State with the help of U.S. and allied air power, rockets and artillery. President Donald Trump has vowed to step up the fight against the militants, though the basic strategy in Mosul was set by U.S. commanders during the Obama administration.

“We take the issue of civilian casualties seriously, every day, not just when it makes news,” said Col. John Thomas, spokesman for the U.S. Central Command, which oversees U.S. military operations in the Middle East. Thomas added that the command, in an effort to be “fully transparent,” was sharing information on unresolved cases.

Monitoring improved

Chris Woods, director of Airwars, asserted that while the Central Command had been working to improve its casualty counts, it was still lagging behind. “Certainly, both Centcom and the coalition have put a lot of effort into improving their casualty monitoring process, and we have been in extensive dialogue with them,” Woods said in a telephone interview from London.

In western Mosul, hundreds of thousands of civilians are trapped, and airstrikes are an essential part of the operation.

The Iraqi military has suffered enormous casualties — 284 Iraqi troops were killed in the first 37 days of the offensive to take western Mosul. U.S. military officials also allege that Islamic State fighters have herded Iraqi residents into buildings, calculating that escalating civilian casualties would prompt U.S. commanders to slow the pace of airstrikes.

But critics say the firepower that is being applied is so extensive that civilians are being put in danger.