Hellfire missiles being loaded onto a US military Reaper drone in Afghanistan. (Photo: Staff Sgt. Brian Ferguson/U.S. Air Force)
The US-led coalition dropped a record number of bombs in its war against the Islamic State (IS) group this year, according to the UK-based monitoring organization Airwars.
Alex Hopkins, an Airwars researcher, said the coalition dropped 10,918 munitions last month on Iraq and Syria.
“So far this year, 10,918 munitions have been dropped on Iraq and Syria, with January, February and March each setting new records for munitions dropped.”
The Airwars report said that these strikes had killed more than 3,400 civilians, mostly in Syria.
“This represents a 59 percent rise in the number of munitions released during January–March 2016, suggesting that President Donald Trump may be following through on his election promise to ‘bomb the shit out of ISIS‘,” the report said.
However, contrasting the Airwars report, figures by the US Air Force Central Command have documented 3,878 coalition strikes on ISIS targets in March, more than 7,000 less munitions than described by Airwars.
Brig. Gen. Matthew Isler, a senior commander in the US-led coalition, told the Air Force Times, that coalition aircraft above Mosul had dropped more than 500 precision-guided munitions a week in March.
The group also claimed that in the past three consecutive months, there had been an average of 53 percent more civilian casualties, meaning the US-led coalition against IS had killed more civilians than the Russian campaign against the Islamic State group.
According to official figures provided to Airwars by CENTCOM, the US carried out 97 percent of all coalition strikes in Syria during March.
© Middle East Eye
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