THERE is a now a pressing new task for the Ceredigion, Carmarthen, Arfon and Dwyfor MPs who voted against bombing in Syria. One that Montgomeryshire Conservative Glyn Davies - the only MP from the region to back air strikes - would probably also support.

They need to ram home an overwhelmingly important message: we can no longer accept the “collateral” killing or injuring of civilians who are the defenceless vulnerable of the campaign to defeat Isis.

Speaking in last week’s Commons debate on extending intervention against these particularly foul terrorists, David Cameron said that in a year and three months of British air strikes in Iraq there had been “no reports of civilian casualties”, and the government’s “starting point” in Syria “is to avoid civilian casualties altogether…” The defence secretary, Philip Hammond, was less hopeful, saying merely that rules of engagement would “minimise” such casualties.

I’m not the first to point out that the important word here is “reports”, and that the prime minister’s claim is weakened by the absence of independent monitors from the highly dangerous areas of Iraq and Syria controlled by Isis. Without them, reassurance about civilian casualties looks like wishful thinking.

If they don’t already know, our MPs may like to consider that data that is available indicates that, in Iraq, 369 civilians were killed by international coalition bombing between January and June this year, many more than the estimated 118 between July and December 2014. Figures dwarfed by comparison with the 7,900 civilians calculated to have been killed in Iraq in total between January and June 2015.

The figures are compiled by the Iraq Body Count (IBC) project, which is run by volunteers and activists based in the UK and US who gather data from Arabic and English media reports and NGOs. In the past, it has been criticised for both under and over-counting.

And the victims of Isis? “The executions have continued at the same level of around 3,000 during a six-month period”, the project adds grimly.

Cameron says: “Our precision weapons and the skill of our pilots makes civilian casualties less likely.” I do not for a minute doubt that. But it is actually cold comfort, which is more than can be said for something noticeable in the Commons debate: the absence of really substantial attention paid by MPs to the unutterably horrible effects on Syrian civilian populations of the reported 29,000 bombs that, according to the BBC, have already been dropped on the country.

These will have been bombs aimed at Isis but which, almost inevitably, will have killed and wounded and completely terrified uncounted numbers of other people. Ordinary people wanting nothing but to live ordinary lives.

It is a figure that should be allowed to sink in.