At the end of last year the US Air Force had dropped about three times as many bombs on Afghanistan as in 2016. New statistics show that by the end of October there had already been 3,554 “fired weapons.” Over the past year they had registered 1,337 munitions drops.
The number of US air strikes on Taliban positions, which now control about 13 per cent of the country, or the “Islamic State” jihadist militia, has been rising dramatically for months. By mid-October military claims had already reached about 2,400 (about 1,000 in 2016).
At the same time more and more civilian victims have been registered. According to the United Nations, in the first nine months of 2017 the number of civilians affected by air strikes increased by 52 per cent compared with 2016, with 205 killed and 261 injured.
