civilian casualties

An injured boy cries in pain inside a field hospital after being hit by US shelling in the Douma neighborhood of Damascus, Syria July 21, 2016.
How would you prefer to die? Suffocation by sarin or suffocation by sandstone? Do you favor starvation over succumbing to shrapnel wounds? Or perhaps your extermination of choice is a more straightforward summary execution at the hands of an irregular militia, extreme jihadist group or simply the nearest intelligence agent?

Hellfire missiles being loaded onto a US military Reaper drone in Afghanistan. (Photo: Staff Sgt. Brian Ferguson/U.S. Air Force)
While US “outrage” at civilian casualties from Syrian airstrikes is being used as a pretext for military intervention against the Syrian government, US forces continue their own airstrikes backing military operations in northeastern Syria, and are killing an increasing number of civilians in their own right.

U.S. Army Maj. Gen. Stephen Townsend, the commander of Combined Joint Task Force 10 and Regional Command East, speaks with Service members during a visit to Baraki Barak, Logar province, Afghanistan, Aug. 25, 2014. (U.S. Army photo by Master Sgt. Kap Kim/Released)

Residents carry the body of several people killed in Mosul, Iraq, Friday, March 24, 2017. Residents of the Iraqi city’s neighborhood known as Mosul Jidideh at the scene say that scores of residents were killed by a US airstrike that hit a cluster of homes in the area. (AP/Felipe Dana)

Residents carry the body of several people killed in Mosul, Iraq, Friday, March 24, 2017. Residents of the Iraqi city’s neighborhood known as Mosul Jidideh at the scene say that scores of residents are believed to have been killed by airstrikes that hit a cluster of homes in the area. (AP/Felipe Dana)

Residents carry the body of several people killed in Mosul, Iraq, Friday, March 24, 2017. Residents of the Iraqi city’s neighborhood known as Mosul Jidideh at the scene say that scores of residents are believed to have been killed by airstrikes that hit a cluster of homes in the area. (AP/Felipe Dana)

A Yemeni soldier looks at the graffiti of U.S. drone strike painted on a wall as a protest against the drone strikes, in Sanaa, Yemen, on Dec. 21, 2013. (Photo: Mohammed Mohammed/Xinhua)
An average of 100 civilians a month are dying in Yemen’s war which enters its third year this weekend, most killed by the Saudi-led coalition’s airstrikes and shelling, the United Nations human rights office said on Friday.

FILE – People inspect the aftermath of a Saudi-led coalition airstrike on a busy funeral hall in Sanaa, Yemen, Saturday, Oct. 8, 2016.
An air strike by a Saudi-led coalition on a market in Yemen killed 20 civilians and six rebels on Friday, medical and military sources said.
The aircraft tried to target Houthi rebels at a roadblock on the southern outskirts of the Red Sea port of Khoukha, but the fighters fled to a market where they were attacked, the sources claimed.

Hellfire missiles being loaded onto a US military Reaper drone in Afghanistan. (Photo: Staff Sgt. Brian Ferguson/U.S. Air Force)
(REPORT) — The Pentagon latest official accounting of civilians killed in US airstrikes in Iraq and Syria follows the same formula as all of the previous reports, admitting to just a tiny fraction of the number of civilians known to be killed, and leaving the overall toll laughably below the estimates by interested NGOs.

Displaced men who fled their homes due to fighting between Iraqi security forces and ISIS militants wait for a security check at an Army base, west of Mosul, Iraq, Feb. 26. 2017. (AP/Khalid Mohammed)