14 Shares 0



14

0







Warplanes belonging to the United States hit a training camp in Sabratha, in Western Libya on Friday, killing at least 49 people and injuring six. White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest justified the attack saying the strike targeted an ISIS militant training camp, including senior operative ISIS militant Noureddine Chouchane, thought to have organized the deadly attack on the Bardo Museum in Tunis in March 2015.

ISIS claimed responsibility for the attack which killed 20 foreign tourists and four Tunisians, two of them perpetrators. To this day there is some discrepancy over the allegiance of the attackers; the Tunisian government still maintains that blame lies with a local splinter al-Qaeda in the Islamic Magrheb group, known as the Okba Ibn Nafaa Brigade.

As with all airstrikes, especially those carried out by the U.S., it is nearly impossible to verify the death of intended targets—not to mention the avoidance of severe collateral damage—and as of Saturday Earnest could not confirm the death of Chouchane.

But Belgrade has confirmed the death of two Serbian captives in the strike, both of whom were being held at the camp. Russian media reports that ransom negotiations were underway with the kidnappers at the time of their deaths.

On Saturday, Serbian Prime Minister Aleksander Vucic confirmed the deaths of Embassy communications chief Sladjana Stankovic and her driver Jovica Stepic in the U.S. airstrike.

“We demanded explanations from the US about whether they knew that foreigners were present at the site. They said they didn’t,” Vucic told journalists.

Despite the confirmations, CNN quotes an anonymous U.S. official saying the State Department had no indication the Serbians were killed at the site.

"We can say with very good certainty there were no civilian casualties at the strike, and the target presented a low risk of civilian casualties," the official said, adding "the Defense Department is very deliberate and careful when selecting targets.”

The U.S. State Department can act confounded at confirmations of civilian casualties due to its airstrikes, but the facts bear a profoundly different story than the one Josh Earnest would have the public believe.

One year into the U.S. airstrike campaign against the so called Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, the U.S. had launched more than 5,700 strikes. Airwars, an accountability project run by independent journalists, found one year into the campaign, “credible reports of at least 459 non-combatant deaths, including those of more than 100 children.”

The most recent data from Airwars regarding the U.S. airstrike campaign on Iraq and Syria shows the number of coalition airstrikes since initial reports in August have nearly doubled to 10,460. At minimum, 914 civilians have likely been killed to date.

Although exact figures of the damages perpetrated on Libyan civilians by U.S. airstrikes are harder to come by, it can be assumed that any time the U.S. State Department says there were no civilian casualties, such statements should be taken very skeptically. The U.S. has given no reason to think it does not kill civilians.

And while the U.S. has allocated the majority of its resources to fighting in Iraq and Syria, the North African nation of Libya remains a target. A report published by the United Nations Security Council in December, 2015 alleges that ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi exerts an inordinate amount of control over the ISIS cells in Libya.

But the fact remains, at least two innocent foreign nationals have been killed by a U.S. airstrike.

Sladjana Stankovic and Jovica Stepic have been in ISIS captivity since 8 November, 2015, when their car was hijacked after separating from a convoy carrying the Serbian ambassador to Libya.

Serbian Foreign Minister Ivica Dacic said authorities had definitely been in the process of negotiating release of the two.

"The kidnappers had a financial interest," added Dacic.

Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova offered a strong rebuke of the carelessness of the U.S. strikes.

“We urge the US and other NATO countries to choose targets responsibly and carefully, like Russian air forces do in Syria. This is not the first time NATO strikes have resulted in the killing of innocent people. There is no doubt that when carrying out such operations the US and its allies have to follow international law, and not act unilaterally, but coordinate their steps with all the necessary members of international community,” Zakharova said.