Syria:

More Civilians Killed in US-Led Coalition Airstrike in Raqqa

Rasa - Field sources in Northeastern Syria reported that a large number of civilians have been killed and wounded in airstrikes by the US-led coalition fighter jets in Raqqa province.

News ID: 430413

Date: 17 June 2017 - 22:11

RNA - The Syrian fighter jets pounded the districts of al-Bayater and al-Jarakesheh Mosque in Raqqa again, killing and wounding many more civilians.

Also scores of civilians lost their lives and were wounded when the US-led coalition carried out an aerial attack in Raqqa, targeting Khalid ibn al-Walid school in al-Intifada neighborhood of the provincial capital city of Raqqa.

In a relevant report released on Tuesday, United Nations war crimes investigators reported that the US-led coalition's aerial back up for the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) to take control of Raqqa from ISIL have thus far killed hundreds of civilians and displaced tens of thousands more.

The UN investigators said that intensified US-led coalition air raids on ISIL's strongholds in Raqqa are causing a "staggering loss of civilian life".

Paulo Pinheiro, chairman of the UN Commission of Inquiry, said that intensified coalition airstrikes have killed at least 300 civilians in the Syrian Northern city of Raqqa since March.

He added that "we note in particular that the intensification of air strikes, which have paved the ground for an SDF advance in Raqqa, has resulted not only in staggering loss of civilian life, but has also led to 160,000 civilians fleeing their homes and becoming internally displaced."

Lama Fakih, deputy Middle East director at Human Rights Watch (HRW) said that "the battle for Raqqa is not just about defeating ISIS (ISIL or Daesh), but also about protecting and assisting the civilians who have suffered under ISIL rule for three and a half years.”

“Coalition members and local forces should demonstrate concretely that the lives and rights of hundreds of thousands of civilians in Raqqa are a parallel priority in the offensive,” Fakih added.

Pentagon chief James Mattis has recently said that the US is “accelerating the tempo” of the fight against ISIL, and that civilian deaths should be anticipated as a “fact of life”.

The comments came after new figures from war monitor the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights found that the last four-week period was the deadliest for Syrian civilians on record since the US-led coalition bombing campaign began in 2014.

Meanwhile, UN Emergency Relief Coordinator Stephen O'Brien announced that over 100 Syrian civilians have been killed as a result of the airstrikes of the US-led coalition in the provinces of Raqqa and Deir Ezzur in recent weeks.

Based on reports, since the first days of 2017 hundreds of civilians have been killed in the US-led coalition's airstrikes in Syria and Iraq.

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 since 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 September 1, 2014 till September 1, 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.

A Military Times investigation had also 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, a senior politician and member of Syria’s Democratic Union, 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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