“An internal military investigation has concluded that two civilians were killed in a U.S.-led coalition airstrike against the self-proclaimed Islamic State…marking the first time the U.S. military has acknowledged killing a civilian since the air campaign began nine months ago,” The Daily Beast reports.  

“Previously, the U.S. military had said it had no evidence that a civilian had ever been killed in the air campaign against ISIS, a claim that even military officials privately acknowledged was hard to believe, given the high odds of unintended mistakes. Indeed, with no U.S. soldiers on the ground to assess the damage inflicted by airstrikes, the coalition’s air campaign is built on U.S. intelligence collected from drones, satellites, and reconnaissance aircraft, as well as information from local troops.”  

“U.S. officials have said they take great care to avoid civilian casualties, and there have even been charged by some local forces on the ground of the U.S. military being overly cautious. But the steady stream of accusations, coupled with the U.S. military’s inability to say with certainly that such claims are false, has only reaffirmed fears that an untold number of civilians have been killed in the fight against ISIS.”