WASHINGTON -- Facing mounting pressure over civilian casualties in U.S. airstrikes, the U.S.-led coalition fighting the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria said Saturday that it was likely that at least 229 civilians had been unintentionally killed since the start of the operations in August 2014.
In February, the last month covered by the report and the first full month of the Trump administration, four such civilians were killed, the coalition said. The assessment, issued monthly, does not include the March 17 strike on a building in Mosul in which more than 200 people are believed to have been killed. That strike is under investigation.
The coalition's overall count is far less than estimates by some human-rights groups. Airwars, a nongovernment organization that monitors reports of civilian casualties in international airstrikes, has asserted that at least 2,831 civilians are likely to have been killed by the coalition's air attacks since August 2014.
The worries about civilian casualties have grown as Iraqi forces push to take western Mosul from the Islamic State with the help of U.S. and allied air power, rockets and artillery. President Donald Trump has vowed to step up the fight against the militants, though the basic strategy in Mosul was set by U.S. commanders during the Obama administration.
"We take the issue of civilian casualties seriously, every day, not just when it makes news," said Col. John Thomas, spokesman for the U.S. Central Command, which oversees U.S. military operations in the Middle East. Thomas added that the command, in an effort to be "fully transparent," was sharing information on unresolved cases and was even describing episodes that military personnel had reported up the chain of command but had not previously received public attention.
Chris Woods, director of Airwars, asserted that while the Central Command had been working to improve its casualty counts, it was still lagging behind.
"Certainly, both [Central Command] and the coalition have put a lot of effort into improving their casualty monitoring process, and we have been in extensive dialogue with them," Woods said in a telephone interview from London.
"But despite these improved resources, both [Central Command] and the coalition appear unable to keep up with the number of allegations," Woods added. "Given the intensity of operations in Mosul and around Raqqa, that gap continues to grow."
Raqqa, in Syria, is the Islamic State's self-declared capital.
In western Mosul, hundreds of thousands of civilians are trapped, and airstrikes are an essential part of the operation. The Iraqi military has suffered high casualties -- 284 Iraqi troops were killed during the first 37 days of the offensive to take western Mosul -- and it depends upon U.S. firepower to advance.
U.S. military officials also allege that Islamic State fighters have herded Iraqi residents into buildings, calculating that escalating civilian casualties would prompt U.S. commanders to slow the pace of airstrikes.
But critics say the firepower that is being applied is so extensive that civilians are being put in danger. In one recent week in Mosul, the U.S.-led coalition carried out attacks with 700 bombs and rockets, and another 400 strikes with satellite-guided Himars missiles, according to military officials.
In the March 17 strike in western Mosul, which led to the collapse of the building, U.S. officials have acknowledged that the United States had a role, but said the munition used should not have been powerful enough to take down a building. They are examining whether the U.S. strike might have set off a larger blast from explosives set by militants in or near the building.
A Section on 04/02/2017