AP analysis: At least 9,000 civilians died in battle to liberate Mosul from ISIS

At least 9,000 civilians were killed in the battle to retake the northern Iraqi city of Mosul from the Islamic State in Iraq & Syria (ISIS), according to a new analysis from The Associated Press.

The figure is almost 10 times higher than the previously reported casualty rate, with the analysis finding that 9,000 to 11,000 civilians were killed in the operations between October 2016 to July 2017.

Of the nearly 10,000 deaths reviewed by the AP, one-third resulted from attacks by either Iraqi forces or the U.S.-led coalition, while another third died at the hands of ISIS in a last-ditch “frenzy of violence,” the news outlet said.

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The AP said it reached the number after analyzing and compiling information from Airwars, an independent group that documents airstrikes in the region, as well as data from Amnesty International, Iraq Body Count and a United Nations report.

The AP also obtained a list of more than 9,600 people killed during the battle from Mosul’s morgue.

The official counts disclosed by the U.S.-led coalition and the Iraqi government pale in comparison to the numbers compiled by the news service.

Iraq’s Prime Minister, Haider al-Abadi, told the AP that 1,260 civilians died in the efforts to liberate the city, while the coalition recognizes that it is accountable for the deaths of 326.

“It is simply irresponsible to focus criticism on inadvertent casualties caused by the Coalition’s war to defeat ISIS,” a spokesman for the coalition, Col. Thomas Veale, told the AP.

“Without the Coalition’s air and ground campaign against ISIS, there would have inevitably been additional years, if not decades of suffering and needless death and mutilation in Syria and Iraq at the hands of terrorists who lack any ethical or moral standards.”

Iraqi forces began operations to liberate Mosul from ISIS in October 2016 and declared victory this past July.

ISIS seized the city in a blitzkrieg across northern Iraq in the summer of 2014, in which it also eventually took control of the Mosul Dam.