F-16 Fighting Falcon aircraft (AFP Photo / DOD / US Air Force / JonathanSynder) / AFP
Between 9,000 and 11,000 civilians were killed during the nine-month battle with ISIS in the Iraqi city of Mosul, according to the count provided by “Mosul’s gravediggers, its morgue workers and the volunteers who retrieve bodies from the city’s rubble”, AP reported.
This number has not been acknowledged by the US-led coalition or the Iraqi government and is nearly 10 times higher than what has been reported previously.
According to an AP investigation, Coalition and Iraqi forces are responsible for “at least 3,200 civilian deaths from airstrikes, artillery fire or mortar rounds between October 2016 and the fall of the Islamic State [ISIS] group in July 2017.”
Meanwhile, the US-led coalition acknowledges responsibility for only 326 of the deaths. The coalition allegedly lacks the resources to send investigators into Mosul.
AP further reports:
In addition to the Airwars database, the AP analyzed information from Amnesty International , Iraq Body Count and a United Nations report. The AP also obtained a list of 9,606 people killed during the operation from Mosul’s morgue. Hundreds of dead civilians are believed to still be buried in the rubble.
Of the nearly 10,000 deaths the AP found, around a third of the casualties died in bombardments by the U.S.-led coalition or Iraqi forces, the AP analysis found. Another third of the dead were killed in the Islamic State group’s final frenzy of violence. And it could not be determined which side was responsible for the deaths of the remainder, who were cowering in neighborhoods battered by airstrikes, IS explosives and mortar rounds from all sides.
But the morgue total would be many times higher than official tolls. Iraqi Prime Minister Haidar al-Abadi told the AP that 1,260 civilians were killed in the fighting. The U.S.-led coalition has not offered an overall figure. The coalition relies on drone footage, video from cameras mounted on weapons systems and pilot observations. Its investigators have neither visited the morgue nor requested its data.
What is clear from the tallies is that as coalition and Iraqi government forces increased their pace, civilians were dying in ever higher numbers at the hands of their liberators: from 20 the week the operation began in mid-October 2016 to 303 in a single week at the end of June 2017, according to the AP tally.
Abdel-Hafiz Mohammed, who kept his job as undertaker throughout the militants’ rule, has carved approximately 2,000 headstones for the al-Jadidah graveyard since October 2016.
While the AP report includes nothing new for independent observers of the conflict in Iraq. It is one of the rare examples of admition of the reality on the ground by the mainstream media. This reality has nothing with the US-led coalition’s claims that push the “precision strikes without civilian casualties” narrative on a regular basis.
MUCH HIGHER
I guess it’s gonna be around 50.000.
US air force pounding away against anti-ISIS elements, to be sure, but that also inflicted on the PMU and supporting militias. But, in all truth, much of the civilian toll was the Russian air force coming in on ISIS areas, flagrantly targeting what Russian and allied Intelligence identified as pro-ISIS people, ISIS families, etc, being moved in for the projected Saudi and North African Wahabbist take over and colonisation of the given area.
Dude your talking nonsense, Its Mosul Russia didnt Do shit There, your confirmation bias is disgusting. Reading this extend m’y.morning crap by 10 minutes dear God!!!
But the Russian air force was actually active in Mosul and Iraq. There were and are things the interests that be prefer not to relate. Footage, images, reports coming out were purposefully and also inadvertantly mis-represented. Air strikes were supposedly this party, but were the other party, or, this or that destruction or fatalities was given as this or that but it was actually something else. And so on.
Do you claim some sort of insider knowledge . Both Mosul and Raqqa air space were controlled by the USAF . Do you remember the USAF shooting down the Syrian Air Force pilot ?
Abject rubbish. Your controllers must be embarrassed by your stupidity Colin.
Do we need to be polite to you because you undertook “special education” at school or can I say exactly what I am thinking at the moment.
Let me guess you are Ukrainian, American or retarded.
I am pleased and grateful for what Russia did. When I said ‘ flagrant ‘, that was not meant so much in a critical sense, but a mere description of how it went.
Colin, stop digging . Just hide in the one you have.
Got it now – my apologies.
PLUS:
https://twitter.com/HassounMazen/status/944183731878756353
And this good result is thanks to advanced, precise american military technology. How many peeople would die, how many buildings would be destroyed, if these two citites would be captured with ol, rosty, unprecise, ugly russian weapons ….
irony off :)
Yes indeed, and what was the point of all that bombing in Raqqa since ISIS was holed up in underground tunnels and then later evacuated.
To destroy a beautiful and ancient historical city , too much pre-Islamic history .
Some say to eliminate the Sunni locals to make room for the Kurds , maybe both .
in raqqa they fooded the tunnels.
That’s assuming that A: Russian targeting is that imprecise. The minimal bomb loadout of Russian bombers seems to be on par with those of Western aircraft. If Russian targeting was that unprecise they would have to carry more bombs, in the hope that some would get near the target. As US bombers did during the Vietnam war.
And B: that US targeting is actually precise. Based on that map I’d say that the US basically carpetbombed Raqqa.
Read Patrick Cockburn’s account regarding Mosul, he was a field correspondent and actually made contact with one of the residents who eventually died after his family was killed.
It’s not rocket science, ISIS snipers would be spotted in an apartment window, the Iraqi security forces would either call in an airstrike with at least a 500lb (or 1000lb) ordnance, or artillery, most of the building would be destroyed. It’s not like we have x-ray to determine how many civilians were in the building. Cockburn noted that the buildings lacked pitting from small arms fire indicating a massive use of bombs.
ISIS also used black tarp to thwart aerial targeting so the U.S. would bomb those areas but civilians would use the same tarp to cool down their residences in the hot summer months.
11,000 killed, 1/3 rd by ISIS executions, 1/3 attributable to coalition forces and a mysterious 1/3 ‘crushed’, hmm… I wonder how that happened, extraterrestrials? I’m going to guess building collapse from bombing.
Multiply by 10 at least.
Like ISIS is a US tool, count ISIS murders as USA murders.
I’d say that ISIS handles it propaganda wrong. Instead of showing us images and movies of ISIS remnants valiantly blowing up a tank with a missile they should have done what Green Daesh did in East Aleppo. Lots of shots of injured civilians of US airstrikes being brought into hospitals. And if possible show us dazed injured small children.
Oh, what delicious irony that could have been. But I reckon ISIS doesn’t care about improve its image, they don’t give $0.02 about their image. Nor about using public opinion against their enemies. Only about motivating their fanbase of sad little Jihadi wannabes, sitting behind their laptops and smartphones in the West, dreaming of becoming the next suicide terrorist for the Caliphate.
They would not want their propaganda to expose and offend their paymasters , interesting that the “White Helmets” didn’t show up in Mosul or Raqqa . That’s because the USAF controlled that “air” .