Last month, more Syrian civilians were killed by US-led coalition airstrikes than by their Russian counterparts, according to a report by war monitor Airwars.
Airwars estimates 91 non-combatants died in Syria as a result of strikes carried out by America and its allies during January this year. This compares to just 48 civilians reported killed in Russian attacks, according to monitor The Syrian Network for Human Rights.
This is the first time the balance has tipped in this direction since September 2015 and the beginning of the Russian intervention in Syria’s civil war. A year before, in January 2016, casualties of Russian assaults were as much as 14 times higher than those of the US-led coalition.
The reason? Regime victory in Aleppo and the signing of a ceasefire deal at the end of 2016 inevitably meant a calming of Russia’s aggressive aerial campaign against opposition fighters.
This lull coincided with increased US support for a Kurdish ground campaign against Daesh fighters in Raqqa. Meanwhile, in neighboring Iraq, as many as 150 civilians were killed in the same period, as the US also stepped up its aerial campaign against the Daesh presence in Mosul.
Are the figures a reflection of a change of pace under Donald Trump’s administration? Yes and no.
In fact, Airwars has reported that non-combatant casualties from US airstrikes were already on the up towards the end of Obama’s presidency. Around 294 civilians were estimated killed in Mosul from October to January, while around 62 died in Raqqa at US hands across a similar time frame.
Still, the casualty toll is expected to rise under Trump, who has given US military commanders a month to devise a more aggressive anti-Daesh strategy.
The new US President certainly showed his disregard for civilian lives in the region last month when he authorized a controversial attack on an Al-Qaeda site in Yemen, killing 16 women and children.
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