U.S. military: 1,300 civilians killed in Syria, Iraq since 2014

May 31 (UPI) -- U.S.-led fighting in Iraq and Syria have inadvertently killed more than 1,300 civilians over the last five years, U.S. military officials said Friday.

Operation Inherent Resolve said in a statement Friday the civilians were "unintentionally killed by coalition strikes" between 2014 and last month. It added coalition forces carried out 34,500 strikes during that period. Inherent resolve, which launched in mid-2014, is the U.S. military campaign fighting Islamic State militants in Iraq and Syria.

U.S. officials said it uses "thorough and deliberate" methods to minimize civilian casualties from air bombings.

Monitoring group Airwars questioned the death toll Friday, suggesting the count is higher -- between 8,000 and 13,000. Airwars said last month 1,600 civilians were killed in air attacks on Raqqa, Syria, alone during the coalition's five-month campaign to drive Islamic State militants from the city.

Military officials say they're still analyzing more than 100 other cases.

"The coalition is willing to consider new civilian casualty allegations as well as new or compelling evidence on past allegations to establish accountability based on the best available evidence," OIR said.