US President Donald Trump’s rundown of ground forces in Afghanistan was accompanied by an escalation in the air war – resulting in hundreds of civilian deaths, according to a study by the Costs of War Institute at Brown University, Rhode Island.
From 2017 to 2019 the number of Afghan civilians killed in airstrikes rose by 330 per cent, says the study, more than in any other year since the start of the current conflict in 2001 and 2002.