The New York Times: Pentagon covered up the true numbers of civilians’ casualties in its wars – Syrian Arab News Agency

The New York Times newspaper revealed that the military command in the U.S. Department of Defense covered up the true number of civilian victims ,including children, who lost their lives during the wars launched by Washington on Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan during the past years.

Drawing on documents from Pentagon, the investigation reveals that, since 2014, the American air war was characterized by highly flawed intelligence and often led to the deaths of thousands of civilians., the newspaper noted.

In its report, the newspaper reviewed cases in which civilians were killed at the hands of the US forces ,and none of them resulted in an admission of wrongdoing, adding that in 2016,  120 Syrians were killed in the vicinity of Tokhar village , north of Manbij in an airstrike that the Pentagon claimed at the time was targeting a gathering of Daesh (ISIS) terrorists.

According to the Pentagon’s count, 1,417 civilians have died in airstrikes in the campaign against ISIS in Iraq and Syria; since 2018 in Afghanistan, U.S. air operations have killed at least 188 civilians. But The Times found that the civilian death toll was significantly higher.

According to the US newspaper, which had access to more than 1,300 internal documents of the US Department of Defense, “the Pentagon leadership has not conducted full investigations into such incidents and has not taken measures to prevent them in the future.