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.......
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!!
‘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.
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.
Tags: Raqqa War
Crimes ===============================
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.
