The British government denies allegations that Royal Air Force (RAF) jets caused multiple civilian casualties in recent airstrikes in Iraq despite increasing evidence. British Defense Secretary Michael Fallon was requested to conduct an investigation on these claims.
Evidence on claims that Britain's RAF jets killed civilians in recent bombings in Iraq are mounting up although the UK administration continues its denial. RT reported that Airwars, an organization tracking the war against Islamic State (IS) in Syria and Iraq, presented UK Defense Secretary Michael Fallon evidences linking RAF involvement to civilian deaths in Iraq.
Airwars director Chris Woods requested Fallon to investigate possible civilian casualties resulting from Britain's bombings. The UK Ministry of Defense (MoD) acknowledged receiving the letter but maintains its stance that no civilians were killed in military actions against Iraq and Syria. A spokesperson said that the MoD will conduct a full investigation "in conjunction with coalition authorities".
According to Telegraph, Airwars recorded that RAF attacks in Mosul and Ramadi could have slaughtered 32 civilians. The monitoring group has been gathering various sources and tallying possible civilian casualties from air and drone attacks since August 2014. Woods wrote in his letter to Fallon that over 88 citizens were killed by coalition strikes in Iraq in December 2015.
The UK government previously said that it only considers evidence obtained from its own "local sources", without saying what those sources were. Woods said that they found inconsistencies in information from the US Central Command database. "One of the things that troubled us was that we were aware of three times more alleged civilian casualty incidents than Centcom was," declared Woods. "Their own internal mechanisms were simply missing two out of three alleged cases on the ground and we ended up sharing our data set with them, simply so they could begin triggering investigative processes for those events they were unaware of".
openDemocracy reported that Caroline Lucas, a Green Party MP in the House of Commons, asked MoD to give an estimate of the number of rebels and civilians killed from military activities against IS. However, the MoD reportedly evaded the question and only gave an approximate figure of 330 for ISIL fighters destroyed in the attacks from September 2014 to August 2015. "We do not believe there have been any civilian casualties as a result of UK strike activity," said Fallon.
Another monitoring group called Iraq Body Count estimated the total of non-combatant casualties to be between 151,000 and 171,000 since the war began in 2003. Meanwhile, both civilians and rebels slain totaled to 242,000.
