The Bloody Cost of War

The London-based Airwars NGO released a report yesterday that attempts to estimate the number of civilian casualties resulting only from U.S. air strikes over the last 20 years of post-9/11 wars. According to the data compiled by Airwars, including information made available by the U.S. Department of Defense, the U.S. has declared at least 91,340 strikes across seven major conflict zones. These strikes have likely killed at least 22,679 civilians but the number killed could be as high as 48,308 civilians killed. The worst-affected country was Iraq, where more than 11,000 civilians were likely killed by US strikes, followed by Syria and Afghanistan, according to the report.