The Pentagon is preparing to repay the families of civilians killed during American airstrikes in Iraq. American airstrikes have allegedly killed hundreds of Iraqi and Syrian civilians, including at least 100 children, but the Pentagon has only admitted to a few Syrian civilian deaths and hasn’t publicly recognized any in Iraq.
“The Pentagon is about to get a $5 million fund to pay the Iraqi families of civilians killed by American airstrikes,” the Daily Beast reported on Sunday. “It’s a big change for the U.S. military, which has yet to publicly acknowledge accidentally killing or wounding any innocents in the country even after 3,586 airstrikes targeting the so-called Islamic State.” More than 2,570 airstrikes have been conducted by the U.S. in Syria, to date.
The annual defense budget was passed in the House last Thursday and is expected to pass the Senate this week. Remittances usually are paid out for deaths, injuries, or destruction of property and amount to around $2,500 per payment. The budget of $5 million has been set aside specifically for Iraqi families with no announcement that Syrian families will yet be considered for reparations.
Airstrikes against ISIS targets in Iraq began in August 2014. Targeted strikes against ISIS in Syria soon followed. The U.S. initially planned to train around 5,400 Syrian rebels to exclusively fight ISIS but that plan was later scrapped. Now, the Obama administration plans to deploy less than 50 special operations troops to Syria to help Kurdish and Arab militias fight ISIS. Reports have recently come to light that, in addition to an already extensive list of crimes against humanity, implicate ISIS in using mustard gas against rebel groups.
The number of casualties is also likely to increase in the coming weeks as the Obama administration steps up the air campaign against ISIS. “Defense Secretary Ashton B. Carter has promised Congress that the air war in Syria will escalate ‘with a higher and heavier rate of strikes,’ including more attacks against top Islamic State leaders and oil fields that remain one of the group’s main financial lifelines,” the New York Times reported.