Iraq and Syria:
Militants try to stoke outrage over spike in civilian deaths.
BAGHDAD — Islamic State and al Qaeda-linked militants are quickly moving to drum up outrage over a sharp spike in civilian casualties said to have been caused by U.S. air strikes in Iraq and Syria, posting photos online of a destroyed medical center and homes reduced to rubble. “This is how Trump liberates Mosul, by killing its inhabitants,” the caption reads.
The propaganda points to the risk that rising death tolls and destruction could undermine the American-led campaign against the militants.
During the past two years of fighting to push back the Islamic State, the U.S.-led coalition has faced little backlash over casualties, in part because civilian deaths have been seen as relatively low and there have been few cases of single strikes killing large numbers of people. In Iraq — even though sensitivities run deep over past American abuses of civilians — the country’s prime minister and many Iraqis support the U.S. role in fighting the militants.
But for the first time anger over lives lost is becoming a significant issue as Iraqi troops backed by U.S. special forces and coalition air strikes wade into more densely populated districts of Iraq’s secondlargest city, Mosul, and U.S. -backed Syrian fighters battle closer to the Islamic State’s Syrian stronghold of Raqqa.
That has the potential to undercut victories against the militants and stoke resentments that play into their hands.
At least 300 civilians have been killed in the offensive against Islamic State in the western half of Mosul since mid-February, according to the U.N. human rights office — including 140 killed in a single March 17 air strike on a building. Dozens more are claimed to have been killed in another strike last weekend, according to Amnesty International, and by similar air strikes in neighboring Syria in the past month.
In Syria, as fighting around Raqqa intensified, civilian fatalities from coalition air strikes rose to 198 in March — including 32 children and 31 women — compared to 56 in February, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which documents Syria’s war. Over the course of the air campaign, from September 2014 through February, an average of 30 civilians were killed a month, according to the Observatory.
The U.S. military is investigating what role the U.S. played in the March 17 air strike in Mosul, and American and Iraqi officials have said militants may have deliberately gathered civilians there and planted explosives in the building. The blast left an entire residential block flattened, reducing buildings to mangled concrete.
Among those who lost loved ones, resentment appears to be building toward the U.S.-led coalition and the ground forces it supports.
“How could they have used this much artillery on civilian locations?” asked Bashar Abdullah, a resident of the neighborhood known as New Mosul, who lost more than a dozen family members in the March 17 attack. “Iraqi and American forces both assured us that it will be an easy battle, that’s why people didn’t leave their houses. They felt safe.”
U.S. officials have said they are investigating other claims of casualties in Syria and Iraq.
Some Syrian opposition factions allied with the U.S. have also criticized the strikes, describing them as potential war crimes.