Remove casualty with a heartless command (9)

I believe the answer is:

eradicate

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'remove' is the definition.
(thesaurus)

'casualty with a heartless command' is the wordplay.
'casualty with' becomes 'era' (I can't justify this - if you can you should give a lot more credence to this answer).
'a heartless' means to remove the middle letters.
'command' becomes 'dictate' (I've seen this before).
'dictate' with its middle removed is 'dicate'.
'era'+'dicate'='ERADICATE'

Can you help me to learn more?

(Other definitions for eradicate that I've seen before include "Expunge" , "Extinguish, wipe out" , "Completely remove" , "Stamp out, remove all traces of" , "Destroy completely" .)

I've seen this clue in The Telegraph.

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