Inflated Counts of Civilian Casualties Collateral of Modern War
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By Rodger Shanahan
February 07, 2019
U.S. Air Force photo by SrA Matthew Bruch
Nearly 18 months ago I wrote a piece on The Interpreter (War reporting 101: check your sources) criticising the willingness of the media to cite the claims of advocacy groups about the number of civilian casualties during the air campaign in Iraq and Syria, despite this amounting to unreliable sourcing. The former operational commander of the anti-ISIS coalition campaign responded to claims of excessive civilian casualties inflicted by coalition airstrikes and said that in over 95% of cases the claims were found to lack credibility.
No one will ever be able to confirm which residence was hit by which bomb, if it was indeed struck by one delivered from the sky.
Last week, the Australian Defence (ADF) Force announced that one such claim regarding the possible deaths of civilians during the close-quarters battle in Mosul in 2017 was deemed credible. It was interesting then, to see the reaction of the various players in this space. The ABC reported the issue fairly and noted that Airwars, the NGO that has been responsible for most claims, welcomed the admission.
https://www.realcleardefense.com/articles/2019/02/07/inflated_counts_of_civilian_casualties_collateral_of_modern_war_114168.html
