Britain’s five-year air war against Isis has quietly come to an end, with official figures revealing no bombs have been dropped since September – yet the MoD still acknowledges only one civilian casualty in the entire conflict.
The data shows that over a period longer than the first world war, 4,215 bombs and missiles were launched from Reaper drones or RAF jets in Syria and Iraq, and a wide discrepancy has emerged between UK and US estimates of the number of civilians killed.
The US-led coalition against Isis estimates that all air raids caused 1,370 civilian casualties, and a fresh analysis by Airwars, an NGO, of “problem strikes”, in which it believed noncombatants were killed, has highlighted three involving the RAF.
