The New York Times, which had more than 1.3 thousand internal Defense Department documents at its disposal, reported that the US military often misjudged the situation before launching air strikes in Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan, resulting in many miscalculated civilian casualties.
After examining the material, the journalists came to the conclusion that the military administration underestimated the number of civilian deaths. The article talks about “hundreds of victims” who were not included in the official statistics.
The authors of the article point out that the military did not take into account the fact that civilians may be in the buildings where the attacks were carried out with terrorists. Often the management was not aware of this.
Only 12% of these cases were investigated, and much of the proceedings were dropped due to “incomplete or incorrect” evidence.
As a result, only 10% of the relatives of the dead were compensated.
The Pentagon, in response to a request from the newspaper, announced that the inevitable mistakes made during large-scale military operations.
“Even with the best technology in the world, mistakes happen due to incomplete information or misinterpretation. We investigate every credible case and we regret every innocent life lost,” said Bill Urban, a spokesman for US Central Command.
