A joint media and NGO probe discovered no less than two, and as many as 26, civilian victims of British airstrikes
The UK’s Royal Air Pressure (RAF) killed civilians throughout its most up-to-date bombing of Iraq, in line with an investigation by the Guardian and the monitoring group Airwars, revealed on Wednesday. The report straight contradicts denials by the British authorities that RAF air raids, geared toward Islamic State terrorists, additionally killed noncombatants
The UK joined the US-led coalition towards Islamic State (IS, also called ISIS) in 2014, and carried out a number of airstrikes in Iraq and Syria by way of 2020, dropping greater than 4,000 bombs. The coalition has acknowledged inflicting 1,437 civilian deaths throughout that interval, with out revealing which international locations have been accountable.
In keeping with official figures from the UK’s Ministry of Defence, the strikes killed 1,107 militants and one civilian in Syria, and three,052 militants and never a single civilian in Iraq. The Guardian and Airwars, a UK-based monitoring group monitoring civilian deaths, investigated the declare.
The information outlet and the NGO reviewed over 1,300 coalition paperwork launched to the New York Occasions in addition to MoD documentation launched to Airwars, to establish 43 strikes that the RAF could have been concerned in. Eight strikes within the neighborhood of Mosul have been chosen and researchers carried out interviews on the bottom.
From the six airstrikes recognized as “seemingly” carried out by the RAF, the coalition had acknowledged 26 civilian casualties. One other two civilian deaths have been in a confirmed RAF airstrike on January 9, 2017, which London described as killing two militants.
Along with killing complete households, British missiles maimed and critically injured a number of kids, in line with the investigation.
A Ministry of Defence spokesperson insisted to the Guardian that “there isn’t a proof or indication that civilian casualties have been attributable to strikes in Syria and Iraq,” citing “rigorous processes” in place to attenuate civilian deaths. The British authorities has additionally refused parliamentary requests to clarify the way it tracked civilian casualties.
Whereas agreeing that the UK has a number of the greatest civilian protections in place, retired air marshal Greg Bagwell instructed the Guardian that claiming there had been zero casualties was a “stretch.”
“If we have been saying we have been 90% higher than everybody else, that may be a reputable argument,” he mentioned. “Once you maintain saying the quantity is zero and due to this fact we’re 100% good, it clearly turns into arduous to promote that.”
The Guardian famous that Britain handed a regulation in 2021 placing a six-year statute of limitations on any claims for damages, in order that even when London finally admits to the killings, the survivors won’t be able to hunt compensation.
