US-Led Coalition Warplanes Continue to Massacre Syrian Civilians

Rasa - 18 civilians, including women and children, were killed in US-led collation airstrikes in Raqqa's countryside in Northeastern Syria.

News ID: 428021

Date: 09 March 2017 - 23:43

RNA - 18 Syrian civilians, including six children under the age of six and four women were killed and several more were wounded in the US-led coalition fighter jets' raids in al-Matab town in the Eastern countryside of Raqqa.

The US army had previously claimed that only 220 civilians were killed in the air attacks of the coalition under its command in Syria and Iraq in 2014.

The US command also noted that it could not investigate all reports of possible civilian casualties using “traditional investigative methods,” which involves interviewing witnesses and examining the site of the strike.

Instead, the coalition interviewed pilots and servicemen that took part in combat missions to draw results. The US command also reviewed strike surveillance videos and analyzed government and non-governmental organizations’ traditional and social media content.

In the meantime, Iraq Body Count's website disclosed that 2,316 civilians were killed in air raids of the so-called anti-ISIL coalition only in Iraq since September1, 2014 till September1, 2016.

The US army declared estimates of 220 casualties fall far below the number voiced by some monitoring groups.

The Airwars monitoring group, reckoned that at least 2,463 civilians have been killed by coalition air strikes.

Amnesty International’s figures sharply contradict Washington’s assessment as well.

“We fear the US-led coalition is significantly underestimating the harm caused to civilians in its operations in Syria,” said Lynn Maalouf, Deputy Director for Research at Amnesty International’s Beirut regional office.

Last month, a Military Times investigation revealed that the US Central Command also misled the public when it failed to account for nearly 6,000 strikes dating back to 2014, when the US-led coalition launched its first airstrikes against ISIL terrorist targets.

In October, a senior politician and member of Syria's Democratic Union blasted the wrong reports given out by different US and world bodies on the number of the civilian victims of the US airstrikes on Syria, disclosing that Washington's air assaults on his country claimed the lives of over 5,000 civilians since 2014.

"The recent accusation leveled by Amnesty International against the US-led coalition for its reckless attitude towards civilian lives in its operations since the second half of 2014 is right, but this report mentions wrong figures for the relevant death toll," Mohammad Khalaf Qandil said.

He reiterated that the number of the civilian casualties of the US-led airstrikes in the last two years was by no means any less than 5,000.

The senior politician also slammed the Amnesty International for its long delay in releasing the report, saying that the report was released while the US was committing crimes in Syria and killing large groups of civilians so freely and without any international backlash for several years now.

"These air raids have surely inflicted heavy losses on the Syrian army which is fighting the terrorists in Syria," Qandil lamented.

Qandil's remarks came after the Amnesty International reported that the US airstrikes in Syria claimed the lives of 300 to 1,000 civilians.

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