Toll is far higher than that admitted to by Pentagon

On Sunday, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights issued a statement reckoning the results of the US-led coalition attacking targets across Syria since 2014. Four years later, they have killed around 3,300 civilians.

This is far in excess of Pentagon official figures on the number of civilians killed. There is no official figure for the US-led coalition just in Syria, but the combination of civilians killed in both Syria and Iraq are only 1,061 according to the Pentagon’s count.

The vast majority of the other killed were simply never officially documented, as the Pentagon found many of the largest death tolls “not credible.” The Observatory’s reckoning suggests that the civilians are among the 12,000 “rebels” killed overall by the coalition.

While NGO groups like the Syrian Observatory and Airwars have limited access to information on death tolls, they both tend to come up with similar tolls, far higher than the official figures. This is unsurprising, as the official groups have little interest in keeping track of who they’ve killed, and ample reason to hide the worst incidents of civilian deaths.