Military Says ISIS Fight Killed 1,139 Civilians, Far Fewer Than Other Estimates

According to a detailed report released by the United States military Sunday, the number of civilians killed by the Combined Joint Task Force - Operation Inherent Resolve (CJTF-OIR) till date since the beginning of the campaign against the Islamic State group (ISIS) in Iraq and Syria four year ago, was estimated to be over a thousand.

“The Coalition conducted a total of 31,406 strikes between August 2014 and end of November 2018. During this period, based on information available, CJTF-OIR assesses at least 1,139 civilians have been unintentionally killed by Coalition strikes since the start of Operation Inherent Resolve,” the report said.

It further added: “We continue to employ thorough and deliberate targeting and strike processes to minimize the impact of our operations on civilian populations and infrastructure. This process includes thorough review and vetting of each target package prior to a strike, and another review after that strike. Our regular strike reports make our activities publicly accessible, and our monthly publication of civilian casualty reports makes our civilian casualty assessments similarly accessible to the public.”

The "unintentional" deaths reportedly occurred during the 31,406 airstrikes, carried out by the coalition, which included 12 casualties in a strike on a bomb-making factory in Mosul, Iraq, when the facility was destroyed from a secondary explosion in May 2017. Reports of the same event from outlets such as BBC listed the number of deceased to be over 100. In fact, the monthly report only added 15 more deaths since its November tally.

The tally of civilian deaths is by no means final as the military is yet to assess 184 reports of casualties. U.S. Army Col. Thomas Veale, a spokesman for CJTF-OIR, said in June that there was no way to truly find out exactly how many civilians were killed during the airstrikes.

"As far as how do we know how many civilians were killed, I am just being honest, no one will ever know," Veale said in a briefing at the Pentagon, Business Insider reported. "Anyone who claims they will know is lying, and there's no possible way."

While the official military report maintains the total number of deaths to be a little over a thousand, the number was drastically lower than the estimate put forward by agencies such as the Syrian Network for Human Rights and Airwars, a non-profit organization that keeps track of civilian deaths in Syria, Libya, and Iraq.

While the Syrian Network for Human Rights estimates 6,395 civilians were killed in Syria this year alone, in a report released on Nov. 1, Airwars estimates the total death toll in last four years to be around 7,316 to 11,637.

The CJTF-OIR report comes a couple of weeks after President Donald Trump announced on Twitter that the ISIS had been defeated in Syria and hence he will be withdrawing U.S. troops from the conflict-ridden country.

“We’ve won, it’s time to come back, they’re getting ready, you’re going to see them soon,” he added during a speech at the White House. “Our boys, our young women, our men, they are all coming back and they’re coming back now. We won and that’s the way we want it.”