US military admits killing 23 civilians around the world in 2020

3 June, 2021: The US military has admitted responsibility for accidentally killing 23 civilians in foreign war zones in 2020, far beneath figures compiled by NGOs. However, it did recognize more civilian deaths compared to previous years.

The count included civilian fatalities for US led operations in Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, Yemen and Nigeria, as indicated by the Pentagon report.

The US Department of Defense (DoD) “surveys that there were around 23 regular people killed and roughly 10 civilians injured during 2020 because of US military activities,” the document read, a piece of a yearly report needed by Congress since 2018 in spite of the fact that pieces of it stay mysterious.

Most civilian casualties were in Afghanistan, where the Pentagon said it was answerable for 20 deaths, as per the public part of the report. One civilian was killed in Somalia in February 2020 and another in Iraq in March. The report delivered to the general population doesn’t indicate when or where the 23rd casualty was executed.

The document says that despite the fact that Congress distributed $3m to the Pentagon in 2020 for monetary remuneration to the groups of civilian casualties, no such amount has been paid. NGOs routinely publish higher civilian death tolls in regions where the US military is dynamic all throughout the planet.

The NGO Airwars, which records civilian survivors of air assaults, said that their most moderate assessments show that 102 regular folks were killed in US activities all throughout the planet – multiple times higher than the authority Pentagon figures.

The United Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) checked 89 dead and 31 injured in operations by US driven coalitions, Airwars said.

In Somalia, where the Pentagon recognizes just a single civilian death, Airwars and different NGOs gauge the loss of life at seven, while in Syria and Iraq neighborhood sources report six dead, the NGO said.

“It is clear the Defense Department’s investigations and affirmation of non-military personnel hurt remain horrendously lacking,” said Hina Shamsi with the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).

“It is striking that in 2020, the Defense Department didn’t offer or make any amends payments to affected civilians and families regardless of the accessibility of assets from Congress,” said Shamsi, who heads the ACLU’s National Security Project.

The report also acknowledged that 12 additional incidents in 2017 and 2018, which left at least 50 civilians killed and 22 others injured, “were inadvertently not reported in the past.” One air raid in al-Zira in Iraq on January 6, 2017 left 16 civilians killed, and another in Mosul on January 12, 2017 that killed 12 civilians. On August 13, 2017, a further 12 civilians were killed and six others injured following an air raid in Raqqa in Syria. At that time, the US and its allies were battling ISIL (ISIS).

On top of the 50 previously unreported civilian deaths, the Pentagon also said that 12 civilians were killed in al-Bayda in Yemen on January 29, 2017. The report said, “Over the past several years, DoD has continued to refine its practices and procedures for reviewing reports of civilian casualties.”

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