Washington (CNN) The Pentagon has told Congress it estimates that nearly 500 civilians were killed as a result of US military actions in the first year of the Trump administration.

"(The Department of Defense) assesses that there are credible reports of approximately 499 civilians killed and approximately 169 civilians injured during 2017" as a result of military operations in Iraq and Syria targeting ISIS, operations in Afghanistan targeting the Taliban and ISIS, and operations in Yemen against al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula and ISIS, the report said.

The report which provides an estimate of the number of civilian casualties in counterterrorism operations in 2017 also said the Defense Department has "no credible reports" of civilian casualties as a result of US military operations in Somalia or Libya last year.

However, the report adds that "more than 450 reports of civilian casualties from 2017 remained to be assessed," meaning the number of civilian casualties caused by US military operations could go up.

The report covers both US airstrikes as well as ground combat operations.

Read More</s>Nearly 500 civilians were killed in U.S. military operations in President Donald Trump's first year in office, a Pentagon report to Congress estimates.

"The Department of Defense (DoD) assesses that there are credible reports of approximately 499 civilians killed and approximately 169 civilians injured during 2017," the report said, noting military operations against Daesh terror group in Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan and Yemen, and against Taliban in Afghanistan and al-Qaeda in Yemen.

The counter-terrorism report said the DoD had "no credible reports" of civilian casualties due to U.S. military actions in Libya or Somalia in 2017.

However, "more than 450 reports of civilian casualties from 2017 remained to be assessed," the report added, indicating the casualty count could increase.

The report includes civilian casualties in both ground combat operations and airstrikes.

Airstrikes in Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen and Somalia increased significantly during the Trump administration's first year. In Afghanistan, the number of strikes jumped nearly quarterfold, to 4,361 in 2017 from 1,337 in 2016. The number of strikes in Syria and Iraq climbed to 39,577 from 30,743 in the same period, according to the Air Forces Central Command.

"Despite the best efforts of U.S. forces, civilian casualties are a tragic but at times unavoidable consequence of combat operations," the Pentagon said, attributing the casualties to the use of human shields and other endangering tactics by Daesh and al-Qaeda in urban areas.

The report was delivered under a mandate signed into effect by executive order by then-President Barack Obama in 2016.

The order mandated "an annual summary" including terrorist and civilian casualties as well as "the number of strikes undertaken by the U.S. Government against terrorist targets" in areas outside active conflict sites.

Though Obama's order specified the report would be made public "annually on May 1," the Trump administration missed the deadline, drawing criticism from human rights groups.

On Thursday, the U.S.-led coalition combating Daesh in Iraq and Syria reported "at least 892 civilians have been unintentionally killed" in 29,358 coalition strikes from August 2014 through the end of April 2018.

However, outside groups put the number of civilians killed much higher than the coalition's count.

While the DoD acknowledged the discrepancies, it attributed them to "different types of information and different methodologies to assess whether civilian casualties have occurred."</s>"(The Department of Defense) assesses that there are credible reports of approximately 499 civilians killed and approximately 169 civilians injured during 2017" as a result of military operations in Iraq and Syria targeting ISIS, operations in Afghanistan targeting the Taliban and ISIS, and operations in Yemen against al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula and ISIS, the report said.

The report which provides an estimate of the number of civilian casualties in counterterrorism operations in 2017 also said the Defense Department has "no credible reports" of civilian casualties as a result of US military operations in Somalia or Libya last year.

However, the report adds that "more than 450 reports of civilian casualties from 2017 remained to be assessed," meaning the number of civilian casualties caused by US military operations could go up.

The report covers both US airstrikes as well as ground combat operations.

During the first year of the Trump administration airstrikes in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Yemen and Somalia increased while the number of strikes in Libya decreased. The number of airstrikes in 2017 in Afghanistan was 4,361 versus 1,337 in 2016 and the number of strikes in Iraq and Syria in 2017 was 39,577 versus 30,743 in 2016, according to Air Forces Central Command. "Despite the best efforts of US forces, civilian casualties are a tragic but at times unavoidable consequence of combat operations," the Pentagon's report said. "This is especially true when fighting in urban areas and against adversaries like ISIS and al-Qaeda who use civilians as shields and whose tactics include intentionally endangering the lives of innocents," it added. Delivery of the report was mandated by a 2016 executive order signed by then-President Barack Obama. That order called for "an annual summary" detailing the "the number of strikes undertaken by the US Government against terrorist targets" outside areas of active hostilities as well as information regarding the number of terrorists and civilians killed in those strikes. The order said that the report was to be made public "annually on May 1, consistent with the need to protect sources and methods." Human rights groups slammed the Trump administration last month when the order's deadline was missed. The US-led military coalition fighting ISIS in Iraq and Syria released its own report Thursday saying that "at least 892 civilians have been unintentionally killed" as a result of the 29,358 strikes that the coalition has carried out against ISIS targets between August 2014 and the end of April 2018. Outside groups have said that the number of civilians killed in the ISIS fight is much higher than the coalition's figures. "(The Department of Defense) acknowledges that there are differences between DoD assessments and reports from other organizations," the report said, saying "these differences result from a variety of factors" including the use of "different types of information and different methodologies to assess whether civilian casualties have occurred."</s>WASHINGTON—The Pentagon said U.S. military operations in six countries killed almost 500 civilians in 2017, in an annual report that was released to the public for the first time on Friday.

The figures accounted for casualties in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and Yemen. The Pentagon said it hadn’t received any credible reports of civilian casualties in the remaining two countries, Libya and Somalia.</s>Human rights advocates are calling the Pentagon's newly released figures on civilian casualties during President Donald Trump's first year in office a massive under-count that belies the true scale of carnage and reveals an absence of meaningful investigations into reported deaths.

In its required report to Congress, the Pentagon said Friday that "there are credible reports of approximately 499 civilians killed and approximately 169 civilians injured during 2017" as a result of military operations in Iraq ,Syria, Afghanistan, and Yemen. There were "no credible reports" of civilian casualties as a result of U.S. military operations in Somalia or Libya in 2017, the report claimed. There are still "450 reports of civilian casualties," however, that "remained to be assessed," indicating the Pentagon itself could increase the toll.

"Despite the best efforts of U.S. forces, civilian casualties are a tragic but at times unavoidable consequence of combat operations," the Pentagon's report said.

According to Hina Shamsi, director of the ACLU's National Security Project, the death toll the Pentagon is owning up to—a month late—seems "astonishingly low," calling the administration's "methodology, investigation, and credibility into question."

Consider, for example, that the monitoring group Airwars said in a tweet on Friday: "For reference, @airwars counted over 2,200 (more than 4x [the Pentagon's number]) civilian deaths due to U.S.-led strikes just in Iraq and Syria **during the first 6 months of 2017** alone. These were mostly—but not all—American strikes." Airwars also noted that in Raqqa, Syria, "1,400 civilians were killed by U.S.-Coalition attacks between June and October 2017."

In addition, in its assessment of 2017 the group found that at a minimum, 3,900 civilians were killed in Iraq and Syria by the U.S.-led coalition:

Across Iraq and Syria, casualty incidents tied to likely Coalition strikes more than tripled compared to the year before. To date, the Coalition has conceded 93 events in which it confirms having killed or injured civilians during 2017—up from 58 such confirmed events for 2016. An additional 673 civilian casualty incidents were classified by Airwars researchers as 'Fair' for 2017. An event is assessed as fair when it has two or more uncontested credible sources, and where the Coalition has confirmed it carried out strikes in the area. Overall, between 3,923 and 6,102 non-combatants were likely killed in these 766 events in 2017— a 215% increase on the 1,243 to 1,904 civilians estimated as likely killed by Coalition strikes in 2016. At least 2,443 additional civilians were reportedly wounded in these 766 events over the course of 2017, a significant increase from the year before.

Contributing to the inaccurate picture of civilian deaths is the Pentagon's failure to actually investigate claims of such casualties, says Daphne Eviatar, director of security with human rights at Amnesty International USA.

Not only has the Pentagon "deemed that the vast majority of claims of civilian casualties are not credible without ever investigating them," she said that the "investigations that do occur by the Defense Department also do not appear to involve interviews with witnesses nor survivors, nor visits to the locations of the strikes. This further undermines their credibility."

"We call on the U.S. government to meaningfully investigate all claims of civilian casualties and to be transparent about who is killed and harmed in U.S. military operations," she added.

Assessing 2017 under Trump, commentator Sonali Kolhatkar wrote, "The greatest impact of Donald Trump's first year as president has been kept out of sight from most Americans. The wars the U.S. waged during Barack Obama's tenure have sharply escalated under Trump. The result has been a predictable and massive spike in civilian deaths."

"The monstrosities being carried out in our name, and with our tax dollars, are no less our responsibility when we ignore them," she wrote. "Trump's foreign policy may indeed be the most dangerous game he is playing as president."</s>U.S. military operations killed approximately 500 civilians in 2017, as President Trump took command of the Pentagon and U.S. troops pursued the Islamic State and other militants overseas, a report made public on Friday found.

In a new study mandated by Congress, the Defense Department said it considered allegations about those incidents, which took place in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and Yemen, to be credible after an internal review. Another 169 civilians were reported injured.

But watchdog groups and legal experts said the Pentagon may be grossly undercounting the number of noncombatants killed in airstrikes and other military activities due to a faulty system for investigating and counting possible deaths.

“The Defense Department has deemed that the vast majority of claims of civilian casualties are not credible without ever investigating them,” Daphne Eviatar, a director at Amnesty International USA, said in a statement. “Its numbers therefore likely severely undercount the actual civilian death toll.”

Airwars, which tracks and examines casualty allegations using social media and other information, reported this year that the United States and its allies may have killed as many as 6,000 civilians in strikes in Iraq and Syria alone in 2017.

In its study, required by the fiscal 2018 defense authorization law, the Pentagon said it had abided by laws of war, including those designed to protect civilians.

[How a woman in England tracks civilian deaths in Syria, one bomb at a time]

Defense officials have long defended the precautions they take to avoid accidental targeting of noncombatants, citing elaborate measures taken to surveil target sites and calculate blast areas before airstrikes. Military leaders including Defense Secretary Jim Mattis have called the U.S. operations against often brutal militant groups highly precise.

But the challenge facing military leaders has increased as the fight is more often conducted from a distance, using aircraft and local partners to reduce harm to U.S. troops. That approach often reduces U.S. forces’ visibility of what is occurring in battlefields where militants and civilians exist in proximity.

The period covered by the report included intense U.S. air operations to expel the Islamic State from the Iraqi city of Mosul and the Syrian city of Raqqa, both of which occurred in a crowded urban context.

The Pentagon said it and its allies conducted more than 10,000 strikes against the Islamic State in 2017, a massive air operation that presented a challenge to U.S. surveillance and intelligence capabilities.

The report also included an increasingly intense air war in Afghanistan, where U.S. commanders have been granted new authorities to target the Taliban and provide air support to Afghan troops.

Also in 2017, U.S. forces continued their counterterrorism campaign in Yemen, where a deadly raid in January 2017 left a Navy SEAL dead and, according to Yemeni villagers, killed dozens of civilians.

The Pentagon study, which was first reported by CNN, found no credible allegations of civilian casualties in separate U.S. operations in Somalia and Libya.

Watchdog groups have long derided the Pentagon’s count as noncredible, criticizing the department for failing to conduct interviews with witnesses and survivors. They also fault the military for its lack of widespread condolence payments.

In its study, the Pentagon acknowledged the divergent death tolls but said its analysis incorporated certain information unavailable to civilian investigators “such as operational planning and intelligence sources.”

Ryan Goodman, a professor at New York University Law School and former Pentagon official, argued in a recent op-ed that a central flaw to the military process was the high bar, requiring substantial indications that a death may have occurred, set for opening an investigation. An even higher standard is required for confirming a death took place.

Speaking Friday, Goodman said the report failed to include information requested by Congress about confirmed and “reasonably suspected” cases.

“I am sure Secretary Mattis as well as Congress want to know the true number of cases in which civilians may have been killed,” he said. “This report does not provide that number.”</s>The Pentagon said U.S. military operations in six countries killed almost 500 civilians in 2017, in an annual report that was released to the public for the first time on Friday.

The figures accounted for casualties in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and Yemen. The Pentagon said it hadn’t received any credible reports of civilian casualties in the remaining two countries, Libya and Somalia.

The Pentagon said about 499 civilians were killed and about 169 civilians injured, without providing a breakdown of deaths and injuries per country or further details about the victims.

It also said it had yet to assess 450 civilian-casualty reports in Iraq and Syria, due to limited resources, indicating the final tally could be higher.

It was the first time the Pentagon released figures for civilian casualties caused by U.S. military ground and air operations around the world in response to a new requirement by Congress for 2018.

“We want to be as transparent as possible and show the rigorous process U.S. forces take to protect civilians,” U.S. military spokeswoman Maj. Audricia Harris said in an email.

The only comparable figures released by former President Barack Obama came in 2016, when he signed an executive order requiring the government to release figures for civilian casualties caused by U.S. airstrikes meant to target combatants in non-war zones. At the time, the White House said such operations killed 64 civilians between 2009 and 2015, a figure that was contested by nongovernmental organizations that track U.S. drone strikes.

This story continues in the Wall Street Journal.</s>The project of bartering Syria with Yemen and Lebanon with Iraq

In parallel with testing paths led by Washington and its allies; the occupation entity and the Saudi entity about the results of the recognition of Jerusalem as a capital of the occupation entity and how to adapt to the stage of negotiation and path of settlements as well as the results of the withdrawal from the nuclear understanding with Iran, in addition to the European clarity of the surrounding international and regional balances and in the confrontation arenas in the region, and the course of negotiation between Washington and North Korea led Washington and its allies to put the option of bartering in front of Iran, Syria, and their allies in the axis of resistance waiting for months for the results of tests to become clear. The barter is between a Lebanese government that is convenient to the resistance versus Iraqi government that is convenient to America and Saudi Arabia including a reassurance to Israel of a Kurdish role otherwise the birth of the two governments will be disrupted and will remain on the waiting list.

The parties of the resistance axis and their allies in Lebanon and Iraq each in his country will refuse such barter. They will not get embarrassed for the disclosure of the impossible conditions of the Lebanese Forces as the seeking to make Lebanon a hostage to the Saudi swap versus big share of the Kurdistan Democratic Party in the Iraqi rule. Those who commit to the resistance in Iraq will succeed in managing that conflict in the light of the confused balances thus this will prevent Iraq from falling prey to the US-Saudi-Israeli alliance, while the Lebanese people will succeed in having a government that expresses faithfully the changes impacted by the parliamentary elections on the nature of the local balances despite the success of disruption in sparing time and waving of long vacancy.

The important endeavor to set balance is taking place in Yemen. Washington, Riyadh, and Tel Aviv depend on the equation of the impossibility to stop the progress of the Syrian Army in restoring the Syrian geography from the armed groups starting from Aleppo. The military resolving is taking place where there is no left room for political gains and where the recognition of the Syrian state through settlement is accompanied with humiliated recognition of the victory of the Syrian President and the Syrian Army. Therefore, the attempts to affect the compromises and to distort them with media are prepared, as posing questions about the meaning of an acceptance of a Turkish role or what Turkey did in the war on Syria and showing that the acceptance of the Syrian army depends on conditions as the non-deployment of Hezbollah and the Iranian forces with the Syrian army which is not real. It is known that the allies support the Syrian army in the war; they are not escorts of its sovereign spread. Because these riots will not change the origin of the new progressive Syrian equation that moves from one region to another, so the work is going on to impose new military reality in Yemen and to seek to employ it by creating similar compromises in which the group of Mansour Hadi is included consensually.

In the past two years the bet was on Taiz to achieve that balance, but all the tests failed. In fall last year the most important bet was on the coup against the former President Ali Abdullah Saleh in order to make Sana’a the goal, but the bet failed despite the preparation which preceded Sana’a battle. Today the bets are on the west coast towards Al Hodeida port, the attack has succeeded in achieving a remarkable progress. It is necessary to show the progress relationship between the open geographic territories and the type of force which was deployed by non-resistance groups in Yemen on the other hand. At the same time it not forgettable that the Yemenis are fighting for more than three years against the Saudi army, Saudi money, UAE army, UAE money, US weapons, and the Israeli experience and intelligence. Their steadfastness is a legend, but this does not mean to expect the success of the completion of the Saudi plan after new plans and new capacitates and forces have been allocated for its confrontation.

The forces of the resistance axis are demanded to grant more focus on the unfair war on Yemen and to organize solidarity activities with the Yemeni people, especially because Al Hodeida port is a sole marine port to provide Sana’a areas and others with the basic elements of life. The former Security Council has already issued presidential statement to stop any military action that targets Al Hodeida, calling to open the port to commercial navigation and lifting the blockade on it, but we must say to the Russian ally that the diplomatic movement in the Yemeni issue is no longer bearing taking into consideration and the cold calculations. The humanitarian massacre committed against that people worth loud voice in the Security Council as in every time the Americans and the Europeans do whenever the Syrian army advances to an area that was under terrorism despite the difference between this and that, between real massacre in Yemen and real famine that kills people and false claims of using chemical weapons in Syria and the hypocrite pretention of caring about the life of the civilians and the lies of the White Helmets.

Filed under: AngloZionist Empire, Axis of Resistance, IRAQ, Lebanon, LF, Nasser Kandil, North Korea, Saudia, War on Syria, War on Yemen, Wars for Israel, Yemen |</s>The US-led coalition fighting the Islamic State group in Syria and Iraq acknowledged Friday the deaths of another nine civilians, increasing the toll of non-fighters killed to at least 892.

The coalition completed a review in April of 159 potential civilian casualty reports and found five were considered credible, resulting in the nine civilian fatalities, a statement said.

They concerned strikes in Iraq and Syria between January 2017 and January 2018.

On January 9, 2017, near the Iraqi city of Mosul, two civilians were killed when a vehicle loaded with explosives that was heading towards coalition positions was struck, the statement said.

On November 1, 2017, three civilians were killed and two others wounded in a strike on a road used by IS fighters in the Deir Ezzor region of Syria's Euphrates Valley.

Three other coalition strikes -- on November 16, December 28 and January 8 -- against IS fighters who had retreated after the fall of their self-proclaimed capital Raqa resulted in a total of four deaths and four wounded.

Of the other potential civilian casualty reports reviewed, the coalition said 149 were deemed non-credible and five were redundant.

From August 2014 to April 2018 the coalition conducted a total of 29,358 strikes and "assesses at least 892 civilians have been unintentionally killed," it said.

Monitoring group Airwars says the number of civilian deaths acknowledged by the US-led coalition is well below the true toll of the bombing campaign, estimating that at least 6,259 civilians have lost their lives.

The US-led operations to fight IS in Iraq and Syria have largely wound down, with the jihadists ousted from almost all of the territory they once held.</s>Just how deep does Iran’s influence run in Syria? After a half decade of overt and covert Iranian military assistance to the regime of Bashar al-Assad, the Iranian regime is widely understood to be playing a key role in the Syrian theater. But, according to a new study from the Omran Center for Strategic Studies, an Istanbul-based think tank focused on the Syrian conflict, this backing is far broader than commonly understood, and encompasses not just military assistance but also an extensive web of economic and political contacts that are designed to give the Iranian regime a lasting presence on the territory of its top regional ally.

“Iranian influence in Syria is often reduced to its military support,” the study notes. However, “Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and its auxiliary institutions not only provided military and financial support to the Syrian regime but have expanded their administrative and economic activities in Syria by infusing their institutions within the Armed Forces, service-delivery ministries, local political and armed bodies, and non-governmental organizations.”

The results, the Omran Center report outlines, are extensive–and dramatic.

By the end of last year, Iran’s military efforts included the large-scale recruitment of Shi’a fighters from places like Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan and had forged a massive auxiliary force–one that the center estimates now encompasses some 50,000 irregular troops. The Islamic Republic has continued to deploy these assorted forces, as well as those affiliated with Lebanon’s Hezbollah militia, into the Syrian theater in support of the Assad regime. It has also succeeded in erecting a new military base south of Damascus, near the Golan Heights and Israeli territory. Based upon aerial photographs of the site, that facility is believed to be able to hold as many as 500 soldiers if fully staffed.

Economically, meanwhile, the Iranian regime signed a raft of new agreements over the past year on everything from power generation to the distribution of humanitarian aid. Iran has even facilitated the creation of a tripartite electric power scheme that closely links its economy and infrastructure with those of both Syria and Iraq. Cumulatively, the Omran study makes clear, these deals have helped to make Tehran a key player in Syria’s future economy.

Tehran’s sway is expanding on a number of societal fronts as well. Iranian-affiliated entities have helped build schools and hospitals throughout Syrian territory over the past year, and become deeply enmeshed in everything from “rubble clearing to blood drives, sporting events, city beautification projects, and children’s camps” in assorted Syrian cities. Among the most prominent fixtures of this cultural offensive has been the establishment of a branch of Iran’s Islamic Azad University in Aleppo.

This activity is a good reflection of what Tehran is actually seeking to accomplish in Syria. True, military support from Tehran has helped to shift the balance of power in Syria’s civil war back toward the Assad regime in recent months–and reinforced the latter’s dependence on the Islamic Republic in the process. But Iran’s overt presence in Syria now faces new problems, including the possibility of repeat Israeli military action and the likelihood of renewed economic pressure on the part of the United States, now that the Trump administration has formally abandoned the JCPOA. In response, Tehran has been working overtime to expand its influence within Syria in other ways.

Iran’s successes in doing so represent a serious problem for the United States. In his May 21st speech outlining the Trump administration’s new Iran policy, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo made clear that the White House views an Iranian exit from Syria as a top regional priority. Among the 12 demands outlined by the secretary in his address was the requirement that “Iran must withdraw all forces under Iranian command throughout the entirety of Syria.”

Yet, even if Tehran does acquiesce to Washington’s demands and draws down its military presence in Syria, the economic and political links established there to date by Iran’s ayatollahs will ensure that Syria and its regime remain firmly in Iran’s orbit. That, in turn, virtually guarantees that they will remain an enduring problem for the West.

Ilan Berman is Senior Vice President at the American Foreign Policy Council in Washington, DC.
A Department of Defense report presented to the United States Congress estimates at 499 the number of civilian deaths in US military actions during the year 2017, with more than 450 reports remaining to be assessed. The casualties occurred in Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan and Yemen.