the pendagon says that there were little over 14 hundred civilian deaths resulting from, you know, the tens of thousands of air strikes they've conducted in eroch an, syria. Now, i can't give you a precise number, but i know that back in 20 17, when a colleague and i went on the ground to do a systematic sample, a sample that we believe is an under count because of the areas we went to. And from that, looking at strikes that had occurred through 20 16 o, i guess in the first little over two years of this air campaign, our inference came out to between seven and ten thousand people, civilians, having been killed.
President Biden gave strict orders to avoid collateral damage during a raid on an ISIS leader. Civilians still died, but it might be a sign of a shift at the Pentagon.
This episode was produced by Victoria Chamberlin, edited by Matt Collette, engineered by Paul Mounsey, fact-checked by Laura Bullard and hosted by Sean Rameswaram.
Transcript at vox.com/todayexplained
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