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The US military has agreed to kill 23 civilians around the world in 2020 Military News

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The Pentagon says most of the civilian deaths were in Afghanistan because it supports more civilian deaths in previous years.

The U.S. military has accepted responsibility for the accidental killing of 23 civilians in foreign war zones in 2020, below data collected by NGOs. But he also acknowledged more civilian deaths in previous years.

According to the Pentagon report, there were civilians killed in operations in Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, Yemen and Nigeria.

The U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) “estimates that there were approximately 23 civilians killed and approximately 10 wounded as a result of U.S. military operations in 2020,” the document read, despite being part of an annual report by Congress since 2018. it remains a secret.

Most of the civilian deaths were in Afghanistan, in which the Pentagon claimed responsibility for 20 deaths, according to the public section of the report.

One civilian was killed in Somalia in February 2020 and another in Iraq in March. The document released to the public does not specify when or where the 23rd victim died.

According to the document, Congress allocated $ 3 million to the Pentagon in 2020 to provide financial compensation to the families of civilian victims, with no compensation paid.

Higher number of NGOs

NGOs publish regularly a much higher number of civilian deaths In areas where the U.S. military is active worldwide.

The non-governmental organization Airwars, which lists civilian victims of airstrikes, said according to their conservative estimates, 102 civilians were killed in global operations in the United States, five times higher than official Pentagon data.

The U.S.-led United Nations Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) counted 89 dead and 31 wounded in operations led by U.S.-led coalition forces.

In Somalia, where the Pentagon acknowledges only one civilian death, Airwars and other NGOs believe the death toll is seven, while sources in Syria and Iraq have reported six deaths, the NGO said.

“It is clear that the Department of Defense’s investigations and recognition of civilian damages are very poor,” Hina Shamsi told the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).

Afghans protest in Kabul to denounce the large number of civilian deaths caused by Western forces in the country [File: Ahmad Masood/Reuters]

“It is striking that in 2020 the Department of Defense did not make any payments or make any payments to the affected civilians and families despite the availability of money from Congress,” said Shamsi, head of the ACLU’s National Security Project.

The report also admitted that in 2017 and 2018 it resulted in 12 additional incidents, killing at least 50 civilians and injuring 22 others, “inadvertently reported in the past”.

An airstrike in al-Zira, Iraq, on January 6, 2017, killed 16 civilians, and on January 12, 2017, killed 12 other civilians in Mosul.

On August 13, 2017, another 12 civilians were killed and six others injured in an airstrike in Syria in Raqqa. At the time, the US and its allies were fighting ISIL (ISIS).

Of the 50 previously unreported civilian deaths, the Pentagon said 12 civilians were killed on January 29, 2017 in Yemen’s al-Baydan.

“In recent years, the DoD has continued to improve its practices and procedures for reviewing reports of civilian deaths.”



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