Pentagon's civilian death toll 'fraction of real figure': Amnesty

The Pentagon has acknowledged only a tiny fraction of civilian deaths at the hands of its coalition strikes against Islamic State targets in Syria and Iraq, Amnesty International has claimed.

Its conclusion that the declared toll of 119 civilians having been killed over two years of airstrikes represents only 5 or 10 percent of the actual figure.

Amnesty researcher Neil Sammonds said its own review found 300 civilians had been killed in Syria alone.

"We appreciate, to some extent, that the US authorities have come forward and acknowledged number of civilian deaths", Sammonds told Russian state broadcaster RT.

"We do feel that it's pretty insignificant, given the amount of killings which they've likely caused."

He added: "Syrian human rights organisations have documented, at least, 650 civilian deaths," he said, while Amnesty, on its part, "looked in detail at 11 cases, in which we believe 300 civilians were killed. And that's in Syria alone".

"With them having now announced something like this, like 119 civilians were killed across the two countries, that's perhaps 10 or 5 percent of the true civilian death toll from the US-led coalition attacks," the researcher said.

The researcher also said that acknowledging the civilian casualties was not enough, and urged Washington to "try to pay some kind of compensation to families and victims where people have been killed or civilian infrastructure severely damaged".

"We still have a lot of concerns that many of their attacks in those countries (Syria and Iraq) have likely violated international humanitarian law," he added.

The Amnesty representative said the blame lay with the Pentagon for "failing to adequately assess the intelligence that they're being provided and not doing enough to keep the population out of harm's way".

Colonel John Thomas said on Thursday that the US, which carries out 80 percent of the coalition bombing, uses precision-guided munitions that "limit civilian casualties".