Within days, that mission broadened. The toll is dwarfed by that of ISIS, but the Airwars group, which produced the research, alleges that the failure of the United States and other nations to release enough information creates space for the Islamists’ propaganda to grow. In Syria, coalition military forces conducted three airstrikes using fighter, fighter-attack and remotely piloted aircraft. In addition to noncombatant deaths, some 48 to 80 allied, or friendly, forces may have been killed, according to Airwars.The report says that efforts to limit the risk to civilians are hampered by an absence of effective transparency and accountability from nearly all coalition members.U.S. authorities have only made public the details of one such incident, admitting in May that a strike last November killed two children.
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Since then, fighter planes and drones from the U.S. and a coalition of partner countries have conducted thousands of airstrikes.
Those same airstrikes are said to have killed more than 15,000 IS militants.
The West had, for the past year, said it was not co-operating with Iran in Iraq, while the Iranian Revolutionary Guards were on the ground and Iranian jets were bombing ISIL targets. Airwars quotes the group as saying that the Syrian government of President Bashar Assad has killed 4,879 civilians “mostly in indiscriminate airstrikes”.Centcom spokesman Lieutenant Commander Kyle Raines said the coalition takes great care to avoid civilian deaths. More than 5,700 air strikes have been launched in the campaign, which nears its first anniversary this Saturday with its impact on civilians largely unknown. We can support them, ” he said. It allowed jihadists to recruit many young Westerners who wanted to help their fellow Muslims fight the bloody dictator.
Coalition forces and Iraqi security forces now dictate the pace of operations in the region.
“I simply do not see how in the long term, Islamic State is going to prevail, no matter how you cut it – in terms of gaining territory, in terms of capability, manpower”, he tells VOA, but “whereas Islamic State seems to be getting weaker in Iraq and in Syria, in some of these other areas where it has affiliates, it’s probably on the march”.
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While Islamic State strongholds remain in Iraq and Syria, other groups around the world have declared allegiance to the group, individuals have carried out attacks in the name of Islamic State, and scores of suspected IS supporters have been arrested – including in anti-IS coalition countries like the U.S.
