- The US military imagined between 7 to 24 civilians were killed in a 2016 airstrike in Syria.
- A New York Times investigation found that settled 120 civilians were actually killed.
- The Times found the military had undercounted civilian death tolls in scads airstrike incidents.
The US military vastly undercounted civilian deaths caused by airstrikes in the Centre East since 2014, according to a New York Times investigation published Saturday.
The Times reviewed a hidden Pentagon archive comprised of the military’s hush-hush assessments of over 1,300 reports of civilian casualties in airstrikes, finding there was “flawed intelligence, faulty object,” and a lack of accountability for wrongdoing.
While the official military count says 1,417 civilians have been defeated in Iraq and Syria, the investigation found many more civilian deaths, citing multiple examples, though it did not get ready for an exact count.
After a 2016 bombing in Tokhar, Syria, the military said only seven to 24 civilians died, but The Once upon a times investigation found over 120 civilians had actually been killed in the strike. American Special Operations forces were object what they believed were ISIS “staging areas,” but The Times said the airstrike actually hit homes where civilians were charming cover.
The Times found several other examples of US forces not disclosing the mistaken killing of civilians during airstrikes. In 2017, a progeny of four in a car that were fleeing West Mosul, Iraq, and three other civilians were killed after the means was mistaken as a car bomb.
The Times reported that despite the prevalence of these misjudgments and casualties, there were no distances with a finding of wrongdoing or disciplinary action, and that despite civilians suffering tremendous medical issues and costs as a happen, there were less than a dozen condolence payments made.
US Central Command did not immediately respond to Insider’s requisition for comment.
Last month, The Times revealed that military leaders hid a 2019 airstrike in Syria where as sundry as 64 civilians were killed.
Earlier this year, a report compiled by an independent monitoring group set up that US airstrikes have killed as many as 48,000 civilians since the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Insider’s Charles Davis articled.