US strikes take high civilian toll

US drone and airstrikes have killed at least 22,000 civilians – and perhaps as many as 48,000 – since the 9/11 terrorist attacks in 2001, according to analysis published by the civilian harm monitoring group Airwars.

Based on the US military’s assertion that it has conducted almost 100,000 airstrikes since 2001, the analysis represents an attempt to estimate the number of civilian deaths across the conflicts that have comprised aspects of the “war on terror”.

Since taking office, President Joe Biden has reduced the US reliance on airstrikes amid a formal review of US drone policy, and has withdrawn from many of the foreign interventions that marked the presidencies of George W Bush, Barack Obama and Donald Trump after the 2001 attacks.

The US said it had conducted at least 91,340 strikes in 20 years, including 9,000 against Islamic State, according to the Airwars report. These included strikes in Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan, and attacks on militant and terror groups in Yemen, Somalia, Pakistan and Libya.

Based on that total, Airwars has calculated that “US actions likely killed at least 22,679 civilians, with that number potentially as high as 48,308”.

According to the group’s research, the deadliest year in the past two decades for civilian victims was 2003, when a minimum of 5,529 civilians were reported to have been killed by US airstrikes, almost all of them during the invasion of Iraq.

The death toll from US airstrikes – which the group admits is imprecise – compares with an estimated 387,000 civilians believed to have been killed by all parties during the war on terror, according to Brown University’s Costs of War Programme.