Older UK Newspaper article

Outgoing US leader carries out 3,000 more strikes in 2016 than year before

Harriet Agerholm

Thursday 19 January 2017 13:19

Incoming US President Donald Trump has said he will wage war on Isis, vowing to "bomb the s*** out of 'em".

And as the world gears up for a seemingly more violent four years, it is worth reflecting on President Obama's tenure

According to newly released figures, President Obama had already upped the number of bombs on foreign countries.

US forces dropped over 3,000 more bombs in 2016 than 2015, taking the grand total of strikes for the year to at least 26,171.

This map by Statista shows you where they were:

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-president-barack-obama-bomb-map-drone-wars-strikes-20000-pakistan-middle-east-afghanistan-a7534851.html

The figures are likely to be an underestimate, since the only reliable data only comes from a handful of countries, and multiple bombs can be classed as a single “strike” under the Pentagon's definition.

But of the confirmed bombings, the vast majority (24,287) took place in Iraq and Syria, according to analysis of official data by Micah Zenko, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.

His research concluded that the US dropped 79 per cent of all 30,743 coalition bombs in 2016.