CIVILIAN CASUALTIES

U.S. Airstrikes Regularly Killed Innocents, Confidential Military Documents Show

The Times documented the U.S. military's broken promise that it would minimize civilian deaths when pursuing targets with drones and bombs.

A New York Times investigation into U.S. military airstrikes in Iraq, Syria, and Afghanistan found that instances of civilian casualties were more common than the U.S. let on, and frequently resulted from systemic problems in the military’s operations. With the help of over 1,300 documents from a hidden Pentagon archive, the Times found that the military’s “deeply flawed intelligence, rushed and imprecise targeting” led to the deaths of thousands of civilians in what President Obama had promised would be “the most precise air campaign in history.”

Among the Times’ key takeaways was a trend of dramatically undercounting civilian deaths. In the Syrian hamlet of Tokhar, for example, the U.S. counted 7-24 deaths after a 2016 bombing, but the Times found that over 120 civilians were killed—and that the targeted buildings housed families seeking refuge.