British air campaign against ISIS ends amid controversy

UK defence ministry continues to deny accusations over unacknowledged civilian casualties

RAF Reaper drones fired hundreds of weapons at targets in Iraq and Syria. AFP

The UK’s five-year air war over Iraq and Syria has come to an end as official statistics on Tuesday showed no munitions had been dropped in six months.

The figures, obtained by the Non-Governmental Organisation Drone Wars, showed that more than 4,000 missiles and bombs were launched by Royal Air Force drones and jets across both countries between August 2014 and December 2019.

The RAF carried out on average around two strikes a day, believed to have resulted in the deaths of 3,964 ISIS fighters.

The data also revealed that Britain’s use of unmanned aircraft in Syria and Iraq increased dramatically when compared with the conflict in Afghanistan.

The use of drones in the fight against ISIS peaked during the Battle of Hajin in December 2018, figures show, when RAF Reaper’s fired 94 weapons as coalition air power supported Syrian Defence Forces fighting to retake the group’s de-facto capital.

But the quiet end to Britain’s air operations against the extremist group comes amid heightened scrutiny over the deaths of civilians in coalition air strikes.

Britain’s defence ministry has been criticised for its official figures which only acknowledge one civilian casualty in the entire five-year conflict.

But the US-led coalition against ISIS in the region estimates that air strikes killed as many as 1,370 civilians.

And on Monday, the US military lent its weight to accusations that strikes carried out by the UK in Iraq and Syria had killed more civilians than officially recognised.

Despite the repeated denials of the UK’s defence ministry, US military sources told the BBC that “credible evidence” showed the RAF was responsible for civilian deaths.

Local reports suggested 15 civilians had been killed in British air strikes in 2017 and 2018. And in the worst incident, at least a dozen civilians were killed in a blast in Raqqa in 2017.