Monitor: US Strikes Have Killed Over 2,000 in Syria

Majority of Slain Were Members of ISIS

Monitor group the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights has issued a report today on US airstrikes in the country, which began in September. They reported a total of 2,079 deaths in the US and coalition attacks.

Among the slain, the large majority were ISIS fighters or suspected ISIS fighters, some 1,922 of them. Another 90 were members of Jabhat al-Nusra, al-Qaeda’s faction inside Syria, while 66 were civilians, including 10 children.

The civilians deaths were almost entirely in ISIS territory, where US planes have regularly attacked civilian infrastructure, including grain silos and oil refineries in Raqqa Province.

The Pentagon has insisted it would investigate claims of civilian casualties, but didn’t believe any of the claims so far were credible. The US has similarly labeled the Nusra fighters “Khorasan,” though this appears to be a term invented entirely by the US to try to convince Syrian rebel factions that Nusra was not a target in the war.

Author: Jason Ditz

Jason Ditz is Senior Editor for Antiwar.com. He has 20 years of experience in foreign policy research and his work has appeared in The American Conservative, Responsible Statecraft, Forbes, Toronto Star, Minneapolis Star-Tribune, Providence Journal, Washington Times, and the Detroit Free Press.