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Casualty (person)


A casualty in military usage is a person in military service, combatant or non-combatant, who becomes unavailable for duty due to several circumstances, including death, injury, illness, capture and desertion.

In civilian usage, a casualty is a person who is killed, wounded or injured by some event, and is usually used to describe multiple deaths and injuries due to violent incidents or disasters. Casualties is sometimes misunderstood to mean fatalities, but non-fatal injuries are also casualties.

In military usage, a casualty is a person in service killed in action, killed by disease, disabled by injuries, disabled by psychological trauma, captured, deserted, or missing, but not someone who sustains injuries which do not prevent them from fighting. Any casualty is no longer available for the immediate battle or campaign, the major consideration in combat, and the reason for lumping together all these different cases. The word has been used in a military context since at least 1513.

Civilian casualties are civilians killed or injured by military personnel or combatants, sometimes instead referred to by the euphemistic expression "collateral damage".

The military organisation NATO uses the following definitions:

In relation to personnel, any person who is lost to his organization by reason of being declared dead, wounded, diseased, detained, captured or missing.

Any casualty incurred as the direct result of hostile action, sustained in combat or relating thereto, or sustained going to or returning from a combat mission.


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