Hele Syrische families in Raqqa uitgemoord door de VS

Ruth Sherlock, Lama Al-Arian en Kamiran Sadoun hebben een artikel geschreven over de situatie in de Syrische stad Raqqa, een jaar nadat de stad door de VS werd gebombardeerd vanwege de aanwezigheid van IS, in wat destijds de hoofdstad van hun bloedige kalifaat was......

Dagelijks is men nog bezig om de lijken onder het puin vandaan te halen, zoals de skeletten van 2 Syrische meisjes...... Het zijn dan ook vooral burgerslachtoffers die men vindt in de ruïnes en massagraven.... Tot nu toe zijn meer dan 2.600 vermoorde slachtoffers gevonden, maar dat moeten er volgens de bevolking ter plaatse, duizenden meer zijn......... Er zijn overigens veel meer burgerslachtoffers gevallen in Raqqa dan IS terroristen......

Uit het hieronder opgenomen artikel wordt ten overvloede nog eens gemeld dat terreurgroep IS, als andere terreurgroepen ('gematigde rebellen') eerder, de bevolking verbood Raqqa te verlaten, op straffe van de dood...... Ik meld dit daar de reguliere westerse media en bijvoorbeeld het Syrisch Observatorium voor Mensenrechten (SOHR, geleid door een misdadiger) keer op keer met de leugen kwamen dat het reguliere Syrische legger vluchtelingen zou hebben doodgeschoten, zoals bij de belegering van Oost-Aleppo....... Terwijl het Syrische leger en de Russen juist vluchtcorridors instelden voor de bevolking, die zoals gezegd door scherpschutters van de 'gematigde rebellen' (financieel gesteund met o.a. ons belastinggeld...) onder vuur werden genomen.......

De VN en een paar landen smeekten de VS destijds te stoppen met de bombardementen op Raqqa, maar dat was als bij de eerdere belegering van het Iraakse West-Mosul tevergeefs...... 'Vreemd overigens' dat dit feit destijds niet of amper werd gemeld door de reguliere westerse media en als het al gemeld werd, dan weggestopt bijvoorbeeld op de laatste pagina van kranten behorend tot die westerse media..... (niet 'vreemd' dus, immers men staat bij die 'onafhankelijke' media ten volle achter de terreur die de VS uitoefent, waar dan ook over de wereld en die media gebruiken daarvoor niet alleen 'fake news' (nepnieuws), maar zoals gemeld verzwijgen ook simpel 'bepaalde nieuwsfeiten......')

Lees het volgende ontluisterende artikel en zegt het ajb voort, tijd dat de wereldbevolking eindelijk achter de waarheid komt en de VS, Saoedi-Arabië, Israël en de NAVO lidstaten gaat zien voor wat ze 'waard' zijn: bloeddorstige terreurstaten!!! De door de VS in Syrië georganiseerde 'opstand' (onder de Obama administratie met hoofdverantwoordelijke voor die opstand: Hillary Clinton...), een opstand die resulteerde in een oorlog en die zou tot nu toe in totaal al zo'n 500.000 mensen het leven hebben gekost....... De VS? De grootste terreurentiteit op aarde!!

EDITOR'S CHOICE | 12.11.2018

‘Entire Families Wiped Out': US Airstrikes Killed Many Civilians in Syria

Ruth SHERLOCK, Lama AL-ARIAN, Kamiran SADOUN

On a busy street corner in Raqqa, Syria, a digger pushes through the rubble of a building hit by an airstrike. Onlookers shield their mouths and noses from the dust and stench of corpses of those who perished beneath.

Just streets away, three recovery workers pull out the delicate skeletons of two children from under the debris of a partially collapsed home. And across the city, in what was once Raqqa's public park, men unearth more bodies from a mass grave.

"Raqqa did not deserve this destruction," says Yasser al-Khamis, who leads the city's emergency response team. "Of course, we understood its fate because it was the capital of ISIS, but we were hoping that the civilian death toll would be lower."

One year after the U.S.-led military campaign against ISIS ended in Raqqa, Khamis' team is still recovering the remains of the battle's casualties. This grim, daily work is revealing a civilian death toll that is dramatically higher than the assessment offered by the U.S.-led coalition against ISIS.

Yasser al-Khamis leads Raqqa's First Responders Team, a U.S.-funded group tasked with emergency work including pulling the bodies of casualties out of the rubble from the war against ISIS.

The rescue workers' findings, which they document in meticulous notes shown to NPR, point to an offensive that killed many more civilians than it did ISIS members, and where the majority of those civilians likely died in American airstrikes.

The U.S.-led coalition against ISIS has so far verified 104 unintended civilian casualties caused by its attacks in Raqqa and is investigating more cases, coalition spokesman Army Col. Sean Ryan tells NPR.

"With new information being submitted to the CivCas [civilian casualties] team by a multitude of sources every month, the numbers will presumably go up," Ryan adds.

The workers in Raqqa, however, estimate the real tally is much higher — likely in the "thousands."

Since January, the rescue team has uncovered more than 2,600 bodies. Through their identification process, they say they have found that most of the bodies were civilians killed in coalition airstrikes during the battle for Raqqa between June and October 2017.

Formally called the First Responders Team, the group receives funding from the U.S. government, but the assistance is limited. Its approximately 37 members work long hours for little pay — some are volunteers — and say their efforts are slowed by a lack of heavy machinery needed to access the bodies.

With many more corpses still under rubble, the rescue workers estimate it will take another year to clean the city of the dead.

Faster strikes and artillery barrages

Raqqa served as the capital of ISIS' self-proclaimed caliphate for almost four years after the militant group seized the city in 2014.

The U.S.-led coalition's offensive on Raqqa came after several years of fighting the extremist group in Iraq and other parts of Syria.

While campaigning for president, Donald Trump vowed to "bomb the s*** out of" ISIS.

In the months following his January 2017 swearing-in, conflict analysts reported increases in both the numbers of U.S. airstrikes and of civilians reported killed in the attacks.

President Trump reportedly handed decision-making power for major bombardments to the military, enabling airstrikes to be more easily called in by commanders on the ground during a battle.

In May 2017, Defense Secretary James Mattis told CBS News the U.S. was accelerating and intensifying the campaign against ISIS, and added, "We have already shifted from attrition tactics ... to annihilation tactics."

In Raqqa, the consequences of the "annihilation tactics" are still keenly felt.

According to Airwars, an independent research group monitoring the anti-ISIS conflicts in Iraq and Syria, the U.S. was responsible for about 95 percent of the airstrikes and all of the artillery barrages in Raqqa. The U.K. and France also participated in the offensive.

Data given to Airwars by the U.S. military's central command show the coalition launched at least 21,000 munitions — airstrikes and artillery — in the city in little over four months.

"Entire families have been wiped out"

By the end of the campaign, Raqqa was a wasteland of smashed concrete; its residential tower blocks were flattened and schools and hospitals toppled. A United Nations study found that over 80 percent of the city — originally home to some 220,000 people — is damaged or destroyed.

Many residents say they lost loved ones in the strikes.

Mohanned Tadfi, 41, recently buried his mother, his brother, his sister-in-law and seven nieces and nephews. "Ten people," he says. "A plane came and hit the house and the building of five floors fell on their heads."

Tadfi says his brother Latuf had found it too hard and dangerous for his family to leave. "ISIS was executing anyone from his neighborhood who tried to escape. And in any case, our mother is diabetic and can't walk well, and it was too difficult [to] carry her because the bridges out of the city had been bombed."

The family stayed in their basement apartment as the war intensified around them. The Syrian Democratic Forces, a U.S.-backed militia, was closing in on the neighborhood and the family thought the fighters would soon capture the area from ISIS.

On Sept. 5, 2017, just after a muezzin in a nearby mosque called the end of noon prayers, an airstrike hit the building where Tadfi's family was. Another brother, Raed Tadfi, went to deliver insulin for their mother. He found Latuf dead on the steps and the building collapsed behind him.

Days later, SDF fighters seized control of the neighborhood. Tadfi says he and his brother asked the militia for access to the house. "Please, there are children under the rubble. My brother's children, young kids. Maybe even just one of them is still alive!" he recalls asking them.

But they were told the area was too dangerous for civilians. It wasn't until three months later that Tadfi was finally able to recover his loved ones. He hired a flatbed truck and took them away to graves he says he dug with his own hands.

The Tadfis' story is one of the cases being looked at by Donatella Rovera, a senior crisis response adviser for Amnesty International who has spent much of the last year in Raqqa. She compiles witness testimonies and analyzes war damage to buildings as part of an ongoing investigation to determine how many civilians were really killed in the coalition attacks.

The building in Raqqa of the former home of Latuf Tadfi and his family, which relatives say was hit by a U.S.-led coalition airstrike.

"This is one case of many that I have been investigating where entire families have been wiped out in places where they thought they would be safe," she says, standing beside the wreckage of the Tadfis home.

Determining casualties

In a statement responding to NPR, Col. Ryan, the spokesman of the Combined Joint Task Force, said the coalition conducted "thorough assessments" to ensure it didn't accidentally kill civilians. "The majority of strikes were executed as planned, but to say this was perfect execution from all sides is meaningless and we understand mistakes were made."

He said the coalition was "fighting a ruthless enemy that was systematically killing innocent civilians and unfortunately some were unintentionally killed trying to liberate them, something we tried to avoid."

Rovera doesn't dispute that ISIS tried to prevent civilians from leaving. But, she says,the military knew that before the battle and did not adjust their attack plan accordingly.

Her investigation so far suggests that "many hundreds" of civilians were killed in the Raqqa offensive, which she says prioritized speed, even in densely populated neighborhoods.

Testimony Rovera gathered from embedded journalists and SDF militia sources suggests that strikes sometimes came "within minutes" of a local commander choosing a target.

"If they had had observation for an adequate period of time, they would have realized that there were civilians in those buildings," she says. "Yes, the war probably would have taken more time. But more lives would have been saved."

The rescue unit says it determined most of the more than 2,600 recovered bodies were civilians in a few different ways. ISIS combatants often dressed a specific way and carried an ID card, the workers say. Other characteristics, such as victims' age and gender and testimony from families, also help in the team's documentation.

Rescuers say they recognize airstrike scenes from the scale of the destruction.

Airwars puts the civilian death toll in the Raqqa offensive at 1,400, but it believes the number could be higher. It gathers data largely remotely, through communication with sources and information from social media, and has not been able to verify every reported case.

"We expected a significantly higher portion of civilian harm reports to be determined as credible, since in Raqqa really the only player causing the destruction was the coalition," says Chris Woods, the director of Airwars.

He explains that the coalition has assessed and accepted only a fraction of the casualty reports from Raqqa than it did from the major campaign to drive ISIS from Mosul, Iraq, from October 2016 to July 2017.

"That suggests a political dimension to the decision-making process," he says. "We can't think of another explanation for that discrepancy."

Rovera, the Amnesty International adviser, says it is imperative that coalition forces send ground investigators into Raqqa. "Having dropped the bombs from the sky they should now be sending their investigators on the ground now to establish the facts of what was the impact of those strikes on the civilian population," she says.

Col. Ryan from the coalition said the existing coalition forces in Syria are not a trained investigative force and taking them away "from their mission is not advisable as the fight against this ruthless enemy continues."

For now, Raqqa's people are left to count their dead largely alone, while the U.S. and other powers strike elsewhere in Syria.

npr.org

Tags: Raqqa  War Crimes 
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Zie ook:
'White Helmets is een terreurorganisatie, zie de bewijzen op Facebook: foto's van de W.H. leden'

'VS heeft al 4 keer het verboden chemische wapen witte fosfor gebruikt' (in Syrië)

Voor meer berichten over Raqqa, Aleppo en/of Mosul, klik op het betreffende label, direct onder dit bericht.

De VS bombardeerde Raqqa plat, terwijl de doelen voor die bombardementen, IS strijders, met duizenden de stad mochten verlaten........

De grootste terreurentiteit op onze kleine aarde, de VS, heeft niet alleen West-Mosul in Irak zo goed als platgebombardeerd, wat bij Angelina Jolie de uitspraak ontlokte dat ze nimmer een dergelijke vernietiging zag*, maar ook het Syrische Raqqa werd voor een heel groot deel door VS bombardementen vernietigd.......

In beide gevallen smeekte de VN en een paar landen die wel menselijke regeringen hebben, de VS te stoppen met die bombardementen, daar vooral de burgers van die steden werden getroffen.... De VS deed niets op die smeekbedes en ging gewoon door met willens en wetens vermoorden van vooral burgers...... 

In West-Mosul is een enorm aantal burgers vermoord met die bombardementen van vooral de VS.... Hun aantal was zo groot dat de terreurregering van Irak besloot de slachtoffers niet te bergen, maar hen te bulldozeren onder het puin van de huizenblokken, dit om het 'officiële' aantal dodelijke burgerslachtoffers zo laag mogelijk te houden.......

Volgens deskundigen zijn in West-Mosul meer dan 20.000 burgers vermoord, echter dit natrekken is zoals je begrijpt onmogelijk, het werkelijke aantal vermoorde burgers zullen we dan ook nooit weten......

Vreemd genoeg mochten destijds tijdens die bombardementen IS strijders de stad verlaten, waarna ze onder begeleiding van de Irak coalitie naar de grens met Syrië werden gebracht...... (om in dat land tegen Assad te vechten) Ofwel men bombardeerde een stad met het doel terroristen uit te schakelen, laat vervolgens een groot deel van hen vertrekken en bombardeert vervolgens vrolijk door tot de stad geheel in handen was van die moorddadige Irak coalitie (onder regie van vooral de VS).........

Hetzelfde heeft zich afgespeeld in Raqqa, waar men eerder sprak over honderden IS strijders en hun familie die mochten vertrekken, blijkt het na onderzoek om duizenden te gaan...... Ook daar ging de VS door met bombardementen op de stad, terwijl het overgrote deel van de strijders al was vertrokken, ofwel de VS bombardeerde vooral de bewoners die niets te maken hadden met IS of andere terreurgroepen......

Gelukkig haalt de schrijver van het hieronder opgenomen artikel, Darius Shahtahmasebi, Aleppo aan en dan m.n. de bevrijding van Oost-Aleppo. Het Syrische leger en de Russen hebben destijds besloten, 2 maanden voor de uiteindelijke bevrijding, te stoppen met bombardementen, juist om zoveel mogelijk burgerslachtoffers te voorkomen..... 

De reguliere westerse media en het grootste deel van de westerse politici schreeuwden destijds echter moord en brand over de bevrijding va, die men in het westen liefkozend 'gematigde rebellen' noemt...... De hysterische reacties van die media en politici waren vooral gebaseerd op berichtgeving die door de terreurgroepen naar buiten werd gebracht, ofwel een dik pak leugens, veelal 'geserveerd' door het SOHR (Syrische Observatorium voor Mensenrechten), geleid door een gevluchte Syrische misdadiger die met de leugen dat hij een politiek vluchteling was, asiel verkreeg in Groot-Brittannië....

Zoals bij alle steden die het reguliere Syrische leger bevrijdde van islam-terreur, was de bevolking van Oost-Aleppo dolblij met hun bevrijders, na deze bevrijding keerde een groot deel van de gevluchte burgers terug naar hun stad...... Het voorgaande volkomen in tegenstelling tot West-Mosul en Raqqa, daar er niets is om naar terug te keren........

The US Annihilated Raqqa While Allowing Thousands of Terrorists to Escape — Why?

June 20, 2018 at 9:28 pm

Written by Darius Shahtahmasebi

(ET) — Amnesty International released an explosive report last week, which described the US-led coalition’s disproportionate and indiscriminate war in Raqqa as the US-led “war of annihilation”.

The report confirmed what some people have suspected for a while but few have dared to even talk about. Namely, that the United States and its allies have completely destroyed a Syrian city, and left almost nothing but death and destruction in their wake.

In coming to its conclusion, Amnesty researchers visited 42 coalition air strike sites across the city and interviewed 112 civilian residents who had survived the ordeal. The results of their investigation shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone who has been paying attention, as approximately a year ago, Reuters described the plight of one resident in Raqqa who found several of his neighbours lying dead on the street, with cats eating the corpses.

The report even details four cases of civilian families who, between them, lost 90 relatives and neighbours. One family lost 39 in total, all of them allegedly killed by coalition air strikes. This would also not be a surprise to anyone who cared enough to follow this story closely, particularly with the Intercept’s shocking article last year titled, ‘Entire families are being killed by US airstrikes in Raqqa, Syria’.

To be fair, US President Donald Trump did once say he would “take out” the families of Islamic State (IS) fighters. He also once asked the CIA why they delayed an air strike on a terrorist target so as to avoid hitting the house with his family inside it. In other words, the Commander-in-Chief of the world’s military superpower doesn’t have a clue how international humanitarian law works.

“When so many civilians are killed in attack after attack, something is clearly wrong, and to make this tragedy worse, so many months later the incidents have not been investigated. The victims deserve justice. The Coalition’s claims that its precision air campaign allowed it to bomb IS out of Raqqa while causing very few civilian casualties do not stand up to scrutiny. On the ground in Raqqa, we witnessed a level of destruction comparable to anything we’ve seen in decades of covering the impact of wars,” said Donatella Rovera, Senior Crisis Response Adviser at Amnesty International.

Most credible estimates of the assessment of the damage done to Raqqa are that a whopping 80% of Raqqa was uninhabitable after the US had supposedly “liberated” its population. This isn’t something the American media even took on with a conscience, or even felt the need to apologise for; this was something they actively bragged about.

“Looking at photographs of the ruined, desolate streets of what was once the Islamic State’s capital of Raqqa is a reminder of the overwhelming, pitilessly effective military power of the United States,” bragged the Washington Post’s David Ignatius in an op-ed last year. “The heaps of rubble in Raqqa that once housed terrorists and torturers convey a bedrock lesson, as valid now as in 1945: It’s a mistake to provoke the United States. It may take the country a while to respond to a threat, but once the machine of US power is engaged, it’s relentless – so long as the political will exists to sustain it,”Ignatius continued.

For all of Bashar al Assad’s flaws, and despite all of the mounting allegations of war crimes against him, after Russia and Syria retook the city of Aleppo in 2016, hundreds of thousands of refugees returned back to live in the city. An Aleppo cathedral even reopened last year with a classical concert (the US-backed rebels occupying Aleppo previously were not big on religious diversity). I don’t know about you, but I haven’t heard of any concerts taking place in Raqqa thus far.

But here is where things get even more disturbing. On November 13, 2017, the BBC dropped a bombshell report exposing how the US cut a secret deal with “hundreds” of IS fighters and their families to leave the Syrian city of Raqqa under the “gaze of the US and British-led coalition and Kurdish-led forces who control the city”. The US even allegedly allowed the escape of some of IS’ “most notorious” members, as well as its foreign fighters and tonnes of weapons and ammunition.

Almost a month later, Reuters took the story even further and reported that a high-level defector from the Kurdish-led forces in Syria had revealed that the number of IS fighters given safe passage was actually in the thousands, not hundreds. This account was then seconded by a security official in Turkey.

So, on the one hand, you have the US exacting all of its military might and power to completely raze Raqqa to the ground, while on the other, they were doing all of this while allowing their alleged targets to escape safely. This ultimately begs the question: who were they trying to kill that entire time? What crime did the residents of Raqqa commit that they had to suffer and endure this criminal behaviour?

It also cannot be overlooked that the US did all of this without any discernible legal basis. For those of you who need this spelt out: the US does not have any legal mandate to conduct military operations in Syria. This is not some secret or mere mistake or accident, the US government’s own lawyers have been advising them of this, even under the Obama administration.

But don’t take my word for it. Speaking to Syrian opposition members at a meeting that took place at the Dutch mission to the United Nations (UN), then Secretary of State John Kerry stated,

“The problem is that the Russians don’t care about international law, but we do. And we don’t have the basis – our lawyers tell us – unless we have the UN Security Council Resolution, which the Russians can veto, and the Chinese, or unless we are under attack from the folks there, or unless we are invited in. Russia is invited in by the legitimate regime – well it’s illegitimate in our mind – but by the regime. And so they were invited in and we are not invited in.

We’re flying in an airspace there where they can turn on the air defences and we would have a very different scene. The only reason they are letting us fly is because we are going after IS. If we were going after Assad, those air defences, we would have to take out all the air defences, and we don’t have the legal justification, frankly, unless we stretch it way beyond the law.”

Despite having this knowledge, it didn’t stop the US from doing what it does best – accounting for at least 90% of the strikes on Raqqa. Ignatius is wrong: it is not a mistake to provoke the United States. Raqqa never provoked anyone. Just like Vietnam, Libya, Korea, Iraq and everywhere else before it, it joins a long list of territories forced to pay the highest price for reasons that cannot and will not ever be justified, let alone investigated by the United States.

By Darius Shahtahmasebi / Republished with permission / Express Tribune / Report a typo

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* Zie:

Tot slot dient nogmaals opgemerkt te worden dat de VS illegaal aanwezig is op Syrische bodem, daarnaast zonder enige VN resolutie Syrisch grondgebied bombardeert en zich schuldig maakt aan enorme oorlogsmisdaden, zoals je hierboven kon lezen.......

Zie ook: 'Voorbeeld BBC en AD propaganda inzake Idlib (Syrië)'

Voor meer berichten over Raqqa, Mosul en Aleppo, klik op het desbetreffende label direct onder dit bericht. (na een aantal berichten volgt hetzelfde bericht keer op keer, even opnieuw onder het laatst gelezen bericht op het desbetreffende label klikken en je krijgt weer een aantal berichten te zien)

Amnesty International: bombardementen op Raqqa van VS coalitie hebben honderden burgers gedood.......

Amnesty kwam gisteren met de uitkomsten van een onderzoek in de Syrische stad Raqqa naar het aantal (massa-) moorden die de VS coalitie daar met bombardementen heeft begaan.....

Je weet waarschijnlijk nog wel dat o.a. De VN, een paar ngo's en een paar westerse landen de VS opriepen te stoppen met de bombardementen op de stad. Helaas aan dovemansoren, net als in het Iraakse West-Mosul ging m.n. de VS gewoon door met bombarderen..........*  

Amnesty spreekt over honderden doden, echter als ik me niet vergis werden er na de inname van de stad duizenden mensen vermist....... Het is als in het Iraakse West-Mosul, hoewel men daar na 'de bevrijding' hele huizenblokken heeft gebulldozerd , zonder eerst de lijken onder het puin vandaan te halen....... Ook daar gaf men toe een honderden burgerslachtoffers te hebben gemaakt, hoewel deskundigen zeggen dat het er minstens 30.000 moeten zijn......

90% van de bombardementen op Raqqa (en eerder in het Iraakse West-Mosul) werden door de VS uitgevoerd. Groot-Brittannië voerde 215 bombardementen uit op Raqqa en als bij eerdere bombardementen van GB (ook in Irak) stelt de legerleiding dat het geen burgerslachtoffers heeft gemaakt....... Het is dat 't allemaal zo triest en smerig is, anders zou je je daadwerkelijk doodlachen, jezus!!

Het aantal doden is moeilijk na te trekken, ten eerste daar men de overledenen binnen 24 uur moet begraven volgens islam voorschriften. Daarnaast waren journalisten niet welkom in Mosul en Raqqa (en andere gebombardeerde steden, bombardementen die volgens het Verdrag van Genève als oorlogsmisdaden moeten worden aangemerkt......)

Weet niet hoe het momenteel met Nederland zit, voeren wij nog bombardementen uit in Irak en verkenningsvluchten boven Syrië? Zo ja, dan wordt er in feite in de landen gemoord middels ons belastinggeld (en met F16 straaljagers, die volgens een aantal ministers uit de kabinetten Balkenende en Rutte 1 en 2, van ellende uit de lucht zouden vallen.....).... Vandaar dat we nu de meer dan waardeloze JSF (F35) van Lockheed Martin gaan kopen, tegen een godsvermogen aan belastinggeld........

Syria: US-led Coalition's aerial attacks in Raqqa killed hundreds of civilians - new report

The devastation in the city is as bad as any Amnesty has seen in decades of covering conflicts around the world © Amnesty International

First-hand investigations in the destroyed city reveal extent of civilian casualties, as Coalition’s ‘war of annihilation’ decimated extended families and neighbourhoods

‘On the ground in Raqqa we witnessed a level of destruction comparable to anything we’ve seen in decades of covering the impact of wars’ - Donatella Rovera

City was blitzed but ISIS fighters were allowed safe passage out of Raqqa in deal with Coalition and Kurdish forces 

UK carried out 215 airstrikes but claims it killed no civilians

‘The UK needs to come clean over its role in this carnage’ - Kate Allen

US-led Coalition forces killed hundreds of civilians - and injured thousands - in the Syrian city of Raqqa in the process of “liberating” them from the Islamic State armed group, Amnesty International said in a new report today, ahead of tomorrow’s one-year anniversary of the Raqqa offensive.

Amnesty researchers visited 42 Coalition airstrike sites across the ruined city and interviewed 112 civilian residents who survived the carnage while losing loved ones in the attacks.

The victims highlighted in Amnesty’s report cut across the city’s socio-economic spectrum and range in age from a one-year-old baby girl to a man in his 80s. 

Their harrowing stories and immense losses stand in stark contrast to the Coalition’s repeated claims that they took great pains to minimise civilian casualties. In September, at the height of the conflict, Coalition commander US Lt Gen Stephen Townsend wrote that “there has never been a more precise air campaign in the history of armed conflict”. Raqqa residents, such as airstrike survivor Munira Hashish, tell a different story: 

“Those who stayed died and those who tried to run away died. We couldn’t afford to pay the smugglers; we were trapped.” 

She and her children eventually managed to escape through a minefield “by walking over the blood of those who were blown up as they tried to flee ahead of us.”

Raqqa’s residents were trapped as fighting raged between ISIS militants and Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) fighters, supported by the Coalition’s air and artillery strikes. Meanwhile, ISIS mined escape routes and shot at civilians trying to flee. Hundreds of civilians were killed: some in their homes, some in the very places where they’d sought refuge, and others as they tried to escape. 

Amnesty’s research and Raqqa residents’ accounts - detailed in the 70-page report, ‘War of annihilation’: Devastating Toll on Civilians, Raqqa - throw into serious question the Coalition’s insistence that their forces did enough to minimise civilian harm. The report details four emblematic cases (see below) of civilian families brutally impacted by the aerial bombardment. 

Between them, they lost 90 relatives and neighbours - 39 from a single family - almost all killed by Coalition airstrikes. Amnesty believes the cases are part of a wider pattern and provide a strong prima facie case that many lethal Coalition air and artillery strikes were disproportionate or indiscriminate attacks carried out in violation of international humanitarian law and are potential war crimes.

Shortly before the military campaign, US Defence Secretary James Mattis spoke of a “war of annihilation” against ISIS in Raqqa, and from 6 June to 12 October 2017 the US-led Coalition operation - involving US, British and French forces - carried out tens of thousands of airstrikes. The US military said it fired 30,000 artillery rounds during the offensive, while its forces are known to have been responsible for more than 90% of the airstrikes. Much of the city was destroyed, with countless homes, private and public buildings and infrastructure reduced to rubble or damaged beyond repair.  

Amnesty has written to defence officials in the USA, UK and France seeking additional information about the report’s cases and other attacks, with Amnesty asking about Coalition tactics, specific means and methods of attack, choice of targets, and precautions taken in the planning and execution of attacks, and about any investigations carried out to date. 

Donatella Rovera, a Senior Crisis Response Adviser at Amnesty International, said:

“The Coalition’s claims that its precision air campaign allowed it to bomb ISIS out of Raqqa while causing very few civilian casualties do not stand up to scrutiny. 

“On the ground in Raqqa we witnessed a level of destruction comparable to anything we’ve seen in decades of covering the impact of wars. 

“A senior US military official said that more artillery shells were launched into Raqqa than anywhere since the Vietnam war. Given that artillery shells have margin of error of over 100 metres, it is no surprise that the result was mass civilian casualties.

“When so many civilians are killed in attack after attack, something is clearly wrong, and to make this tragedy worse, so many months later the incidents have not been investigated. The victims deserve justice.”

Four Raqqa family case studies

The case of the Badran family illustrates how dire the situation became for civilians trapped in Raqqa. Over the course of several weeks, 39 family members were killed in four separate Coalition air strikes as they moved from place to place inside the city, desperately trying to avoid rapidly shifting frontlines.

“We thought the forces who came to evict Daesh [ISIS] would know their business and would target Daesh and leave the civilians alone. We were naïve. By the time we had realised how dangerous it had become everywhere, it was too late; we were trapped,” Rasha Badran told Amnesty. After several attempts to flee, she and her husband finally managed to escape, having lost their entire family, including their only child, a one-year-old girl named Tulip, whose tiny body they buried near a tree.

The Aswads were a family of hard-working traders in Raqqa. Some of them stayed behind to protect their belongings from looting, seeking shelter in their basement. But, on 28 June a Coalition air strike destroyed the building, killing eight civilians, mostly children. Another family member lost his life when he stepped on an ISIS mine when he returned to the city to try to recover the bodies days later. 

Despite repeated attempts to flee, the Hashish family lost 17 members, mostly women and children, over a two-week period in August. A Coalition air strike killed nine, seven died as they tried to flee via a road which had been mined by ISIS, and two others were killed by a mortar launched by SDF.

The fate of the Fayad family illustrates how a Coalition blitz during the final hours of the battle wiped out entire families in the Harat al-Badu area of central Raqqa, where ISIS fighters were known to be using civilians as human shields. The deaths of Mohammed “Abu Saif” Fayad and 15 family members and neighbours in Coalition airstrikes early on 12 October seem all the more senseless because, just hours later, the SDF and the Coalition agreed a deal with ISIS, granting remaining ISIS fighters safe passage out of Raqqa.

Benjamin Walsby, an Amnesty International Middle East Researcher, said:

“If the coalition and their SDF allies were ultimately going to grant ISIS fighters safe passage and impunity, what possible military advantage was there in destroying practically an entire city and killing so many civilians? Raqqa’s civilians are returning home to ruins, pulling loved ones out of rubble, and facing death or injury from mines, IEDs and unexploded ordnance. The Coalition’s refusal to acknowledge its role in creating this catastrophic situation adds insult to injury.”

UK forces carried out 215 airstrikes in Raqqa

According to the Ministry of Defence, UK forces carried out 215 airstrikes in Raqqa. Up until last month, UK ministers had repeatedly claimed that UK forces in Syria and Iraq had killed no civilians. On 2 May, the Defence Secretary Gavin Williamson said that a UK drone missile killed a civilian on a motorcycle in eastern Syria in March. Amnesty has written to the Ministry of Defence seeking detailed information over the UK’s airstrikes in Raqqa.

Kate Allen, Amnesty International UK's Director, said:

“Civilians in Raqqa have suffered grievously at the hands of Islamic State, but they’ve also been imperilled by the Coalition’s disproportionate aerial attacks. 

“The Coalition’s operations in Raqqa have killed hundreds and injured thousands of civilians and the UK needs to come clean over its role in this carnage.

“Having conducted more than 200 airstrikes in Raqqa, the UK needs to be able to show that its targeting was proportionate and that it took proper measures to avoid unnecessary civilian casualties in its joint operations with the US and others. Instead of repeating a mantra about there being ‘no evidence’ of civilian casualties from UK airstrikes, the MoD should publish proper data about its Raqqa attacks - dates, times, locations, weapons used and intended targets. 

“Crucially, ministers should explain how the UK has investigated the impact of its attacks in both Raqqa and Mosul. For example, has the UK carried out on-the-ground investigations at the sites it bombed and interviewed survivors and witnesses?

“With a Defence Committee set to examine Operation Shader, now is the time for the UK to demonstrate to the British public that the UK’s military role in Syria and Iraq has been responsible and lawful. The Government should establish a thorough, impartial investigation into all allegations of unlawful attacks and civilian casualties from UK operations in Raqqa and Mosul.”

Operation Shader is the operational code for the UK’s contribution to the multinational military operation against the Islamic State armed group in the Middle East. 

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Aan dit bericht van Amnesty is een petitie verbonden, gericht aan Trump, dus voor VS burgers >> hier de link voor VS burgers of andere geïnteresseerden.

* Bij de bevrijding van oost-Aleppo door het Syrische leger, stopten de Russen en dit leger al 2 maanden voor de uiteindelijke bevrijding met bombarderen, juist om burgerslachtoffers zoveel mogelijk te voorkomen.... Hiervoor was amper aandacht in de reguliere westerse media, later herhaalde e.e.a. zich bij de bevrijding van Oost-Ghouta, terwijl dezelfde media (en westerse politici) het uitschreeuwden het onaanvaardbaar te vinden dat Rusland en Syrië die stad bevrijdden van psychopathische moordenaars, verkrachters en martelbeulen, in het westen aangeduid als 'gematigde rebellen....'

Zie ook: 'Voorbeeld BBC en AD propaganda inzake Idlib (Syrië)'

        en: 'VS vermoordde met bombardementen in augustus 433 burgers in Raqqa.......... Westerse media alweer stil.......'

        en: 'Raqqa >> BBC World Service en 'onafhankelijke journalistiek': 'Er zijn veel burgers omgekomen bij de strijd in de straten in Raqqa........''

        en: 'Raqqa door VS platgebombardeerd >> reguliere (massa-) media in de VS zijn er trots op......'

        en: 'Groot Brittannie gooit meer dan 3.400 bommen af, die niet 1 slachtoffer zouden hebben gemaakt......'

        en: 'Mosul verwoest door VS.........'

        en: 'US Airstrikes Killing Hundreds of Civilians in Syria’s Raqqa'

        en: 'Mosul, stad van lijken: vele honderden doden onder het puin'

        en: 'VS bombardementen op Raqqa moorden hele families uit..........'

        en: 'VN waarschuwt de VS voor het maken van een onacceptabel aantal Syrische burgerslachtoffers met haar bombardementen.......'

        en: 'VS weigert op het VN verzoek in te gaan tot het stoppen met bombardementen op burgerdoelen in Raqqa..........'

        en: 'Raqqa, een strijd als om West-Mosul, echter met geheel andere media aandacht..........'

        en: 'Bombarderen was een probleem in Mosul, maar niet bij het nieuwe Iraakse/VS offensief.......'

        en: 'Kinderen in Irak vermoord middels VS terreur.......'

        en: 'Honderden burgerslachtoffers in Mosul door VS bombardementen, ofwel grootschalige terreur......'

        en: 'Mass Media Siege: Comparing Coverage Of Mosul and Aleppo' (met mogelijkheid tot vertaling)

       en: 'After Mosul’s “Liberation,” Horror of US Siege Continues to Unfold' (met mogelijkheid tot vertaling)

       en: 'Mosul, het verschil in berichtgeving vergeleken met de bevrijding van Oost-Aleppo...........'

       en: 'Iraakse strijdmacht gaf grif toe dat tot hun orders voor West-Mosul ook het vermoorden van vrouwen en kinderen behoorde........'