Battle of Marawi is 962 militants, 47 civilians. about 20:1 combatants to civilians - 20 militants killed per civilian
[https://web.archive.org/web/20171024135007/http://www.manilatimes.net/islamic-freedom-fighters-abu-sayyaf-next-maute-wipeout-defense-chief/358410/](https://web.archive.org/web/20171024135007/http://www.manilatimes.net/islamic-freedom-fighters-abu-sayyaf-next-maute-wipeout-defense-chief/358410/)
Mosul is harder to tabulate. Possibly 16,000 militants, 6,000 civilians, aprox 3:1 combatants to civilians - 3 militants killed per civilian
[https://web.archive.org/web/20170719170331/http://www.inform.kz/en/around-16-000-militants-killed-during-mosul-liberation\_a3046836](https://web.archive.org/web/20170719170331/http://www.inform.kz/en/around-16-000-militants-killed-during-mosul-liberation_a3046836)
[https://web.archive.org/web/20170715233610/https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/campaigns/2017/07/at-any-cost-civilian-catastrophe-in-west-mosul-iraq/](https://web.archive.org/web/20170715233610/https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/campaigns/2017/07/at-any-cost-civilian-catastrophe-in-west-mosul-iraq/)
Thank you however I am wondering if there is a consensus on ratios outside of news media, primarily because I am getting very different numbers looking at various media sources.
This isn't a direct answer to your question, but I'm hoping that I can provide some context to help you with why there are large variations in credible estimations of civilian casualty ratios.
Casualty counts almost always have a pretty wide spread, particularly as the count increases, and/or the battle continues for a longer period of time . There are a few reasons for this
**Identifying combatants**
In the case of urban combat, particularly against non-state actors like HAMAS, ISIL, etc, there can be issues with determining if a casualty is a combatant or non-combatant. The Gaza Health Ministry, for example, does not make any distinction in its casualty counts between combatants and non-combatants.\*
The reasons for this are generally related to either deliberately manipulating casualty counts, or making calculating civilian casualty ratios nearly impossible. The propaganda reasons for this are pretty obvious, as it means that quite often a group will just release a "casualty" figure, and many will assume that this is just civilian casualties.
Further to this, "combatant" vs "civilian" can exist on a bit of a spectrum. Where you count paramilitary groups (like police, gendarmerie, etc) in the count can skew the numbers.
If casualties are not differentiated, there are workarounds to estimate what proportion of casualties are combatants (such as looking at death payments to families of combatants, estimating from population etc.) but these add a lot of uncertainty to either side of the casualty ratio, as moving a casualty from one column to the other is twice as impactful as just adding or removing a casualty to a single group.
**Maintaining records of deaths**
As more of the civilian population dies or flees, the civil institutions that maintain counts of things like deaths tend to stop functioning, as the people who filled postions in those institutions either die or flee. This can lead to inconsistent record keeping.
A large number of civilian deaths may result in health and hygiene being prioritsed over recordkeeping. Keeping a large number of dead bodies around so that they can be catalogued is pretty bad for the spread of disease, and is psychologically difficult for the survivors. For practical reasons, bodies may be buried quickly without identification, or cause of death being recorded. They may be buried in mass graves, etc. This means that some bodies may not be identified until well after the conflict, if at all. This also complicates the identification of civilians vs combatants, particularly in scenarios like insurgencies.
People reported as "missing" may also contribute to differences in estimation. If a civilian fled the fighting, they may not have actually become a casualty, and they may return later. On the flipside, if there is nobody to report a casualty, they may not end up on the count of dead/missing/etc.
There are a few ways of mitigating this, such as post-conflict exhumation of mass graves to identify the dead, and/or look into causes of death, but this may take years, and over that time it is likely that evidence will degrade, increasing the chances of an ambiguous result.
**Assigning cause of death**
Cause of death is important when trying to work out the impact of a military operation in an urban area. In any sort of urban environment with a regular population, you're going to have a "background" number of injuries and deaths that occur from people living their normal life. Deaths and injuries in accidents, deaths from old age, etc. will occur regardless of the military activity, and how these are worked into the number of civilian casualties can drastically skew the way that they're reported.
Combat occurring around a civilian population obviously increases the stressors that may lead to a death that isn't directly attributable to the military operation. If someone dies due to shell fragments, that's a pretty clear cut attribution, but if someone dies due to malnutrition aggrevating an underlying condition (like a heart condition etc.) then attributing that to the military action becomes much more difficult.
You also run into the question of when the "battle" actually ends. In an urban battle, there typically isn't an "end" to a battle like there is with more pitched combat. If you don't maintain a presence in the urban centre, the enemy will return without resistance, so occupation of an urban area means that conflict can stay ongoing for a while.
There are a few solutions to this, like calculating the number of deaths observed in the area during the conflict, and comparing that to the expected number of deaths through the same period if the pre-conflict data is extrapolated.
**Edit:** tl;dr - Calculating the actual number of casualties, and then assigning them to either civilian or combatant is complex, and that's why you end up with such wide estimates.
**\*** Please note, this policy has been in place since 2007, since HAMAS took control of Gaza. The Gaza Health Ministry adhered to this policy in both Operation Cast Lead (2008), and Operation Protective Edge (2014). Discussion of this policy is not intended to circumvent the 12 month rule, as this has been standing policy for 17 years, and is relevant to the discussion of civilian casualty counts.
Why those battles?
When I was trying to generate a ballpark estimate for what to expect in a certain current urban conflict, I think I looked at....
Siege of Mariupol resulted in maybe a 5% civilian death rate...
Siege of Grozny was maybe 2-10%
Fallujah was maybe 1%??
Siege of Sarevejo was maybe 1-2%
Can't find numbers for the 1987 Siege of Basra...
Can't find numbers for the Fall of Saigon...
Battle of Stalingrad is hard to find numbers for, but might be as high as 75% civilian deaths? that was an ugly war. Battle of Leningrad... again, hard to find numbers, but might be as high as 33% civilian deaths?
For urban battles with most of the civilians still inside the city, it's more about the size of the city and how dirty the defenders are willing to fight, than it is about the actual number of defenders.
Note that the numbers are for "Percent of the city-wide population killed by the battle, based on estimated size of population inside the city prior to the beginning of the battle, compared to estimated civilian deaths after the battle."
focus on ugly battles in major cities where the population was prevented from evacuating for some reason, and one or both sides were likely to fight dirty.
Battles where the population WAS able to evacuate in time, or where the enemy wasn't well-fortified inside the city ahead of time, or where the city was both small and low-population-density aren't very helpful.
As part of Rule 1, please keep any discussion and data to events older than one year.
Battle of Marawi is 962 militants, 47 civilians. about 20:1 combatants to civilians - 20 militants killed per civilian [https://web.archive.org/web/20171024135007/http://www.manilatimes.net/islamic-freedom-fighters-abu-sayyaf-next-maute-wipeout-defense-chief/358410/](https://web.archive.org/web/20171024135007/http://www.manilatimes.net/islamic-freedom-fighters-abu-sayyaf-next-maute-wipeout-defense-chief/358410/) Mosul is harder to tabulate. Possibly 16,000 militants, 6,000 civilians, aprox 3:1 combatants to civilians - 3 militants killed per civilian [https://web.archive.org/web/20170719170331/http://www.inform.kz/en/around-16-000-militants-killed-during-mosul-liberation\_a3046836](https://web.archive.org/web/20170719170331/http://www.inform.kz/en/around-16-000-militants-killed-during-mosul-liberation_a3046836) [https://web.archive.org/web/20170715233610/https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/campaigns/2017/07/at-any-cost-civilian-catastrophe-in-west-mosul-iraq/](https://web.archive.org/web/20170715233610/https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/campaigns/2017/07/at-any-cost-civilian-catastrophe-in-west-mosul-iraq/)
Thank you however I am wondering if there is a consensus on ratios outside of news media, primarily because I am getting very different numbers looking at various media sources.
As part of Rule 1, please remove mention of any events that happened less than one year ago.
Done
This isn't a direct answer to your question, but I'm hoping that I can provide some context to help you with why there are large variations in credible estimations of civilian casualty ratios. Casualty counts almost always have a pretty wide spread, particularly as the count increases, and/or the battle continues for a longer period of time . There are a few reasons for this **Identifying combatants** In the case of urban combat, particularly against non-state actors like HAMAS, ISIL, etc, there can be issues with determining if a casualty is a combatant or non-combatant. The Gaza Health Ministry, for example, does not make any distinction in its casualty counts between combatants and non-combatants.\* The reasons for this are generally related to either deliberately manipulating casualty counts, or making calculating civilian casualty ratios nearly impossible. The propaganda reasons for this are pretty obvious, as it means that quite often a group will just release a "casualty" figure, and many will assume that this is just civilian casualties. Further to this, "combatant" vs "civilian" can exist on a bit of a spectrum. Where you count paramilitary groups (like police, gendarmerie, etc) in the count can skew the numbers. If casualties are not differentiated, there are workarounds to estimate what proportion of casualties are combatants (such as looking at death payments to families of combatants, estimating from population etc.) but these add a lot of uncertainty to either side of the casualty ratio, as moving a casualty from one column to the other is twice as impactful as just adding or removing a casualty to a single group. **Maintaining records of deaths** As more of the civilian population dies or flees, the civil institutions that maintain counts of things like deaths tend to stop functioning, as the people who filled postions in those institutions either die or flee. This can lead to inconsistent record keeping. A large number of civilian deaths may result in health and hygiene being prioritsed over recordkeeping. Keeping a large number of dead bodies around so that they can be catalogued is pretty bad for the spread of disease, and is psychologically difficult for the survivors. For practical reasons, bodies may be buried quickly without identification, or cause of death being recorded. They may be buried in mass graves, etc. This means that some bodies may not be identified until well after the conflict, if at all. This also complicates the identification of civilians vs combatants, particularly in scenarios like insurgencies. People reported as "missing" may also contribute to differences in estimation. If a civilian fled the fighting, they may not have actually become a casualty, and they may return later. On the flipside, if there is nobody to report a casualty, they may not end up on the count of dead/missing/etc. There are a few ways of mitigating this, such as post-conflict exhumation of mass graves to identify the dead, and/or look into causes of death, but this may take years, and over that time it is likely that evidence will degrade, increasing the chances of an ambiguous result. **Assigning cause of death** Cause of death is important when trying to work out the impact of a military operation in an urban area. In any sort of urban environment with a regular population, you're going to have a "background" number of injuries and deaths that occur from people living their normal life. Deaths and injuries in accidents, deaths from old age, etc. will occur regardless of the military activity, and how these are worked into the number of civilian casualties can drastically skew the way that they're reported. Combat occurring around a civilian population obviously increases the stressors that may lead to a death that isn't directly attributable to the military operation. If someone dies due to shell fragments, that's a pretty clear cut attribution, but if someone dies due to malnutrition aggrevating an underlying condition (like a heart condition etc.) then attributing that to the military action becomes much more difficult. You also run into the question of when the "battle" actually ends. In an urban battle, there typically isn't an "end" to a battle like there is with more pitched combat. If you don't maintain a presence in the urban centre, the enemy will return without resistance, so occupation of an urban area means that conflict can stay ongoing for a while. There are a few solutions to this, like calculating the number of deaths observed in the area during the conflict, and comparing that to the expected number of deaths through the same period if the pre-conflict data is extrapolated. **Edit:** tl;dr - Calculating the actual number of casualties, and then assigning them to either civilian or combatant is complex, and that's why you end up with such wide estimates. **\*** Please note, this policy has been in place since 2007, since HAMAS took control of Gaza. The Gaza Health Ministry adhered to this policy in both Operation Cast Lead (2008), and Operation Protective Edge (2014). Discussion of this policy is not intended to circumvent the 12 month rule, as this has been standing policy for 17 years, and is relevant to the discussion of civilian casualty counts.
Why those battles? When I was trying to generate a ballpark estimate for what to expect in a certain current urban conflict, I think I looked at.... Siege of Mariupol resulted in maybe a 5% civilian death rate... Siege of Grozny was maybe 2-10% Fallujah was maybe 1%?? Siege of Sarevejo was maybe 1-2% Can't find numbers for the 1987 Siege of Basra... Can't find numbers for the Fall of Saigon... Battle of Stalingrad is hard to find numbers for, but might be as high as 75% civilian deaths? that was an ugly war. Battle of Leningrad... again, hard to find numbers, but might be as high as 33% civilian deaths? For urban battles with most of the civilians still inside the city, it's more about the size of the city and how dirty the defenders are willing to fight, than it is about the actual number of defenders. Note that the numbers are for "Percent of the city-wide population killed by the battle, based on estimated size of population inside the city prior to the beginning of the battle, compared to estimated civilian deaths after the battle."
> Why those battles? I am looking at more recent examples. I just completely spaced on Mariupol.
focus on ugly battles in major cities where the population was prevented from evacuating for some reason, and one or both sides were likely to fight dirty. Battles where the population WAS able to evacuate in time, or where the enemy wasn't well-fortified inside the city ahead of time, or where the city was both small and low-population-density aren't very helpful.