Claire Wilmot


24 April 2025

Benefit of the Doubt

If the British government is to be believed, only one civilian has been killed by its armed forces during its air war against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. As part of the US-led Operation Inherent Resolve, Britain has dropped more than 4300 bombs on Iraq and Syria since 2014, many of them in densely populated urban centres, and claims to have killed more than four thousand IS fighters. The US admits that the coalition has killed at least 1437 civilians, though the likely toll is far higher. Airwars, a British civilian casualty research organisation, puts the number between eight and thirteen thousand.

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