Civilian casualties

Civilian casualties is a military term describing civilian, non-combatant persons killed or injured by direct military action.

Such military action may or may not have targeted civilians directly, and may or may not have had the purpose of causing civilian casualties.

One example of unintended civilian casualties is when an aircraft targets a bridge with a missile, then lauches the missile, and the pilot realizes that a bus full of women and children is driving onto the bridge. The bridge explodes, collapses, and the bus and its occupants are destroyed.

Other kinds of civilian casualties may involve the bombing of military productions centers and their supporting civilian centers (see WWII German bombing of Polish and Soviet cities as well as Allied bombing of German cities). A more complicated example of civilian casualties involves the targeting of combatants who are using civilians as human shields. This causes a lot of moral wrangling among professional armies, either because of their aversions to targeting civilians, or because of the negative propaganda value of such casualties.

When a military action has for sole purpose the killing of civilians, such action is generally termed an atrocity, and is prosecutable as a war crime. Professional armies do not, as a matter of policies, commit such acts. However, some members of such armies do on occasion, under the stress of the moment, and are sometimes dealt with harshly.

Targeting civilians with military forces generally results in strong and vociferous international condemnation.

Historically, virtually all nations have been willing to inflict civilian casualties in pursuit of their strategic goals as can be seen by reviewing the history of almost any armed conflict throughout the ages. Typically civilian casualties are casued due to the proximity of civilians to another military force or a military target coupled with the use of weapons that were, and still are, not extremely accurate. Siege warfare is a classic example where civilians would retreat inside a fortified structure with the armed forces on the defensive. The siege was designed not to kill the civilians but to force the opposing army to surrender due to starvation, disease, etc. The effects of the siege however directly affected the civilian population as much as the military force resulting in civilian casualties.

The United States military, also, historically has been willing to attack civilian targets if it is determined that mission success is more valuable than the risk of civilian casualties. This is a determination that is not taken lightly. Since anti-war and enemy propagandists often jump at the chance to discredit US military action, such an attack can be detrimental to the mission despite operational success. During World War II, the US participated in the bombing of Dresden in World War II, the firebombing of Tokyo, and became the only nation in the world to use the atomic bomb against enemy cities when Nagasaki and Hiroshima, Japan were destroyed near the end of World War II. Air strikes upon civilian targets also occurred during the Gulf War. See Strategic bombing for more information. The negative propaganda value of such bombing campaigns, as well as the unpopular nature of unnecessary collateral damage, has led the US to create "smart munitions" which are equipped with significantly improved targeting systems over traditional "dumb bombs". Despite these efforts, unintentional civilian casualties during bombing campaigns are not completely avoided.

Another type of civilian casualties is accidental targeting, generally because of stray munition (missiles, small arms fire) or inaccurate targeting (bombs, artillery shells).

The Geneva Conventions describe the rights and responsibilities of nations in combat regarding the protection of civilians. They outline practices that are prohibited in order to protect civilians. They also formalize the concept of proportionality, which describe how much force and how much precaution must be taken in the course of a military activity that might cause injury to non-combatants.

Humanitarian aid workers are given special protections under international humanitarian law, and yet attacks on them still occur.

See also: Collateral damage

• Civilian Shields (http://www.kadmiel.com/kadmiel.com/news_views/7_Killed_in_Gaza_Confrontation.htm)