By contrast, US-led coalition air and artillery strikes killed fewer than 20 civilians per day, on average, during the four-month offensive to drive IS out of the Syrian city of Raqqa in 2017, according to Amnesty International. It is unclear how many civilians lived there at the time, but UN officials estimated that there were between 50,000 and 100,000.
There are more than two million Palestinian civilians in Gaza so 300 people a day dying in Gaza is a smaller fraction of the population than 20 people a day dying in Raqqa.
And an Associated Press investigation suggested that between 9,000 and 11,000 civilians were killed in the nine-month battle between US-backed Iraqi forces and IS for the Iraqi city of Mosul which ended in 2017.
This amounts to an estimated fewer-than-40 civilian deaths per day, on average. Mosul had an estimated population of less than two million people when IS captured the city in 2014.
This, on the other hand, is a remarkably low number of casualties compared to Raqqa. About 0.5% of the civilian population dead compared to somewhere between 2.5% and 5%. Why was Mosul so much less bloody than Raqqa, given that those battles were fought by similar armies at about the same time? Is the current conflict an outlier compared to them? By the numbers, it’s more dangerous for civilians than Mosul but less than Raqqa.