Investigations

Ground-breaking investigations focusing global attention on civilian harm and identifying the perpetrators

3 Apr, 2025
Investigation

What the chats signal about Trump’s Yemen bombing campaign

Ignore the leaked messages – Trump’s campaign is far more deadly than Biden’s

Visual
4 Mar, 2025
Investigation

A Long Return

A short film juxtaposing two videos along the same Gaza road. Taken five years apart, in 2020 and 2025, the footage is synchronised to illustrate the devastating impact of Gaza war

15 Jan, 2025
Investigation

Is a final Syrian civilian casualty count possible?

The challenges and methodologies of reconciling conflicting Syrian civilian death tolls

Open Source
Visual
9 Oct, 2024
Investigation

The Killings They Tweeted

Matching Israeli military strike footage to civilian casualties on the ground to reveal full human cost of ‘precise’ campaign

Open Source
24 Jul, 2024
Investigation

One Name, Two Lists

Cross-referencing open source evidence with Gaza Health Ministry data finds early Ministry death figures largely accurate

A screenshot from The Times' article 'Three generations killed within days: why whole families are dying in Gaza'
Visual
1 Apr, 2024
Investigation

Three generations killed within days: why whole families are dying in Gaza

Together with The Sunday Times, Airwars collated the details of more than 150 families that have lost multiple members in the Israel-Gaza war

Visual
7 Mar, 2024
Investigation

The bombing of Quala 4131

Visual retelling of 2007 Dutch bombing in Afghanistan that killed at least 11 civilians, later ruled unlawful by Dutch court

25 Jan, 2024
Investigation

How we exposed secretive Danish role in Libyan civilian deaths

A behind-the-scenes look at the investigation that forced an official Danish military review

25 Jan, 2024
Investigation

Denmark admits role in NATO airstrikes on Libya that killed 14 civilians in 2011

Exposing the Danish military’s role in 2011 Libya airstrikes that killed 14 civilians

Visual
7 Dec, 2023
Investigation

Killed in a press vest – evidence of Israeli responsibility for attack on journalists in Lebanon

What struck the journalists, where was it fired from, and were there any apparent military targets nearby?

24 Nov, 2023
Investigation

Tribunal notice: Airwars to challenge UK refusal over civilian harm next week

Case brought to contest Ministry of Defence’s lack of transparency on civilian harm processes

Palestinians inspect the ruins of Watan Tower destroyed in Israeli airstrikes in Gaza city, on October 8, 2023 (Wafa).
Open Source
21 Nov, 2023
Investigation

No safe place – tracking civilian harm in southern Gaza

Tracking civilians killed in Gaza’s designated ‘safe zones’ and how supposed havens became sites of fatal strikes

Investigations in partnership with

Open Source
16 Oct, 2023
Investigation

Did Israel bomb a civilian evacuation route in Gaza?

Investigation with the Financial Times into strike on an escape route

Open Source
8 Sep, 2023
Investigation

A year of the Shahed

How Russia turned to a cheap Iranian-made suicide drone to terrorise civilians and hit infrastructure across Ukraine

A still from the Russian Ministry of Defence shows a soldier in Ukraine launching reconnaissance drones
Open Source
6 Jul, 2023
Investigation

The new Russian drone linked to Iran-backed factory

Airwars/FT investigations shines light on secretive Alabuga ‘special economic zone’

Volodymyr Zelenskyy visited Bucha, where he talked to local residents and journalists. President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyy visited the city of Bucha in the Kyiv region, where mass killings of civilians took place during the occupation by Russian troops.
20 Jun, 2023
Investigation

Will German electronics end up in Russian drones?

German tech parts found their way to Russian military drones despite sanctions, flowing through shadowy networks of middlemen and shell companies

4 Apr, 2023
Investigation

Only official civilian victim of UK’s bombing campaign against IS appears not to exist

Two-year investigation finds major flaws in British government’s official narrative

Visual
21 Mar, 2023
Investigation

The hidden casualties of Britain’s war

The UK claims to have killed only one civilian in the war on ISIS. Airwars found otherwise

Visual
23 Jan, 2023
Investigation

‘Waiting to happen’

An ISIS prison break – and the American mistakes that made it more likely

20 Sep, 2022
Investigation

ISIS breakout at US-backed prison followed years of warnings

Documentary with VICE investigates

Visual
13 Jun, 2022
Investigation

A year on, Airwars investigation into Afrin hospital attack reveals crucial details

A horrifying attack on a hospital in the Syrian city of Afrin left 19 people dead – and the perpetrators are still unknown.

4 May, 2022
Investigation

Counting the Dead in Ukraine

A longstanding mechanism for verifying casualties of the Ukraine conflict have been subsumed by the scale of carnage since Russia’s February invasion.

Visual
12 Apr, 2022
Investigation

Anatomy of a Russian cluster munition strike

Airwars examined a single Russian cluster munition strike on a blood donation centre and hospital, which may have caused a 350 metre span of damage, in the Ukrainian city of Kharkiv

7 Apr, 2022
Investigation

Counting the casualties in Ukraine – an interview with the UN Monitoring Mission

Why is the United Nations figure for the number of civilians killed in Ukraine so much lower than other estimates? Uladzimir Shcherbau, head of the UN civilian casualty monitoring team in the country,

31 Mar, 2022
Investigation

The US has quietly restarted admitting to killing civilians in Iraq and Syria

The US-led International Coalition has quietly admitted to killing 18 more civilians in Iraq and Syria and injuring a further 11, its first such public concession in eight months. On March 10th, Operation Inherent Resolve (OIR) – the US-led coalition against the so-called Islamic State – quietly released on its website its first public civilian […]

22 Mar, 2022
Investigation

How Russia is using tactics from the Syrian playbook in Ukraine

Entire settlements reduced to rubble, attacks on civilian targets and the bombing of refugee exit routes were all part of Moscow’s brutal Syria campaign

15 Mar, 2022
Investigation

Civilian status in the Ukraine conflict: a rough guide

Do citizens who take up arms to resist Russian invasion lose protected status? A layperson’s guide to the lines between civilians, militants and soldier.

3 Mar, 2022
Investigation

Airwars launches interactive Ukraine population density map

The map is designed for researchers seeking to understand how heavily populated Ukrainian neighbourhoods targeted by Russia are

21 Feb, 2022
Investigation

New documents reveal fresh concerns about the Coalition’s system for investigating civilian harm

Newly released documents allow fresh evaluation of how seriously the US military took reports of civilian harm. The findings suggest not very.

Open Source
8 Feb, 2022
Investigation

Who killed Ahmed and Youssef?

When two Iraqi holidaymakers were killed in the Kurdish region of the country, the finger of blame turned to Turkish strikes. But this investigation finds a roadside bomb was the more likely cause.

22 Dec, 2021
Investigation

How do the ‘forever wars’ look under President Biden?

Is President Biden really going to end the America’s decades-long campaign?

18 Dec, 2021
Investigation

Trump and Biden’s secret Afghanistan air campaigns revealed

Almost 800 previously secret US airstrikes in Afghanistan during 2020 and 2021 are revealed, as US military declassifies data.

10 Dec, 2021
Investigation

Gaza and Syria: A Tale of Two Israeli Air Wars

New Airwars research finds that 10 times more civilians were killed in 11 days of Israel’s bombing of Gaza than in the entirety of its 8-year campaign in Syria

24 Sep, 2021
Investigation

Five more Afghan strikes the US should apologise for

The US government has admitted the last drone strike of the Afghan war killed an entire family. Why stop there?

6 Sep, 2021
Investigation

Tens of thousands of civilians likely killed by US in ‘Forever Wars’

A minimum of 22,000 civilians have been killed directly by US airstrikes since the start of the War on Terror in 2001, analysis finds.

10 Aug, 2021
Investigation

Pentagon wrongly admitted to killing 21 civilians in Iraq and Syria slain by allies

Allied nations almost certainly killed them. So why did the Defense Department tell Congress that the US was responsible?

Visual
28 Jul, 2021
Investigation

Countdown to the airstrike: the moment Israeli forces hit al-Jalaa tower, Gaza

What would you do if you had minutes to leave your home forever? Residents of a Gaza apartment block recall the frantic moments before it turned to rubble

20 Mar, 2021
Investigation

NATO Killed Civilians in Libya. It’s Time to Admit It.

The alliance bombing campaign had a devastating toll—but, a decade after the war, leaders have still not taken responsibility.

19 Mar, 2021
Investigation

The secret talks that nearly saved Gaddafi

During Libya’s 2011 civil war, Norway came close to brokering a brokering deal that would have seen Colonel Gaddafi step aside. So why did the United States and France oppose it?

18 Mar, 2021
Investigation

Ten years after the Libyan revolution, victims wait for justice

NATO members still refuse to discuss potential civilian harm from their strikes a decade after intervening against Gaddafi.

2 Mar, 2021
Investigation

US military blames “administrative mistake” after forgetting its troops killed Yemeni civilians

The US military has blamed an “administrative mistake” after conceding it forgot its own admission of the killing of up to 12 civilians during a raid on a Yemeni village in early 2017. Details of the admission feature in the Airwars annual report for 2020 which published March 2nd. The US military led a raid […]

18 Nov, 2020
Investigation

The Credibles: How Airwars secured the most comprehensive locational data on civilian harm ever released by the US military

The release is a major breakthrough in transparency and could help Iraqis and Syrians finally secure apologies and even reparations for the death of family members

A March 2017 airstrike during the battle for Mosul against Islamic State. While the US-led Coalition has admitted almost 1,400 civilian deaths during the war, European allies have remained almost silent about their own responsibility. (Via Reuters/ Alaa Al-Marjani)
15 Mar, 2020
Investigation

Europe’s shame: Claims by key allies of no civilian harm in war against ISIS exposed

Key European allies are denying dozens of civilian deaths from their own actions – even where the US-led Coalition finds such cases to be credible.