[2][4][1] In World War II at civilians constituted 60–67% of casualties,[5] but some sources give a higher estimate.
According to the CACE, in urban conflicts (defined as all cities with a population > 100,000[14]): 28.9% of deaths are civilians, 29.5% are combatants, and 41.628% are unknown.
[1][2] Sivard was also criticized for not stating her sources, and the Human Security Report 2005 noted there was insufficient global data on deaths caused by war-related famine.
Germany suffered 300-750,000 civilian dead during and after the war due to famine caused by the Allied blockade.
Russia and Turkey suffered civilian casualties in the millions in the Russian Civil War and invasion of Anatolia respectively.
[22] The high ratio of civilian casualties in this war was due in part to the increasing effectiveness and lethality of strategic weapons which were used to target enemy industrial or population centers, and famines caused by economic disruption.
An estimated 2.1–3 million Indians died in the Bengal famine of 1943 in India during World War II.
A substantial number of civilians in this war were also deliberately killed by Axis Powers as a result of genocide such as the Holocaust or other ethnic cleansing campaigns.
[4] The Demographic Unit of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia used the capture-recapture method to estimate war-related deaths at 104,723, of which 42,106 (40%) were civilians.
Human Rights Watch counted approximately 500 civilians killed by the bombing; the Yugoslav government estimated between 1,200 and 5,000.
During the First Chechen War, 4,000 separatist fighters and 40,000 civilians are estimated to have died, giving a civilian-combatant ratio of 10:1.
The estimates of the civilian casualties during the First Chechen war range from 20,000 to 100,000, with remaining numbers being similarly unreliable.
[27] The tactics employed by Russian forces in both wars were heavily criticized by human rights groups, which accused them of indiscriminate bombing and shelling of civilian areas and other crimes.
[30] The war culminated in a seven-week-long Israeli naval, air and artillery bombardment of Lebanon's capital, Beirut, where the PLO had retreated.
The bombardment eventually came to an end with an internationally brokered settlement in which the PLO forces were given safe passage to evacuate the country.
[31] According to the International Red Cross, by the end of the first week of the war alone, some 10,000 people, including 2,000 combatants, had been killed, and 16,000 wounded—a civilian-combatant fatality ratio of 4:1.
[35] The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA) estimated 4,228 Palestinians and 1,024 Israelis were killed between 2000 and 2007.
Amos Harel wrote that the civilian to combatant casualty ratio of Israeli airstrikes (not including ground operations) was 1:1 in 2003, but by 2007 it had improved to 1:30.
[36] Meanwhile, the Israeli intelligence agency Shin Bet claimed that of the Palestinians killed between 2006–2007 period in the Gaza Strip (not including the West Bank), only 20% were civilians.
[52] Differing methodologies have resulted in varied reports of both the overall death toll and the civilian casualty ratio.
[53] According to the main estimates between 2,125[54] and 2,310[55] Gazans were killed and between 10,626[55] and 10,895[56] were wounded (including 3,374 children, of whom over 1,000 were left permanently disabled[57][better source needed]).
In March 2015, OCHA reported that 2,220 Palestinians had been killed in the conflict, of whom 1,492 were civilians (551 children and 299 women), 605 militants and 123 of unknown status, giving Israeli forces a ratio of 3:1.
[76][77] For mathematical inconsistencies[73] in the IDF data, and further criticism, see Casualties of the Israel–Hamas war – Israeli military claims.
[79] The global coalition's War against the Islamic State, from 2014, had led to as many as 50,000 ISIL combatant casualties by the end of 2016.
[80] Airwars calculated that 8,200–13,275 civilians were killed in Coalition airstrikes, mainly up to the end of 2017, with especially high casualty rates during the Battle of Mosul.
[83] The civilian casualty ratio for U.S. drone strikes in Pakistan conducted during 2004 and 2018 as part of the War on Terror is notoriously difficult to quantify.
In 2010, the U.S. itself put the number of civilians killed from drone strikes in the last two years at no more than 20 to 30, a total that is far too low according to a spokesman for the NGO CIVIC.
[85] An ongoing study by the New America Foundation finds non-militant casualty rates started high but declined steeply over time, from about 60% (3 out of 5) in 2004–2007 to less than 2% (1 out of 50) in 2012.
In 2011, the study put the overall non-militant casualty rate since 2004 at 15–16%, or a 1:5 ratio, out of a total of between 1,908 and 3,225 people killed in Pakistan by drone strikes since 2004.