The US-backed assault to drive the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) from its Syrian capital Raqqa in 2017 killed more than 1,600 civilians, a figure 10 times what the coalition has acknowledged, according to a new report. The investigation, published by Amnesty International and the monitoring group Airwars on Thursday, urged top coalition members to “end almost two years of denial about the massive civilian death toll and destruction it unleashed in Raqqa”. Donatella Rovera, senior crisis response adviser at Amnesty, said, “Many of the air bombardments were inaccurate and tens of thousands of artillery strikes were indiscriminate.”\u00a0 Syria: Hundreds of bodies exhumed from mass grave in Raqqa “Coalition forces razed Raqqa, but they cannot erase the truth,” she said. The findings were compiled after months of field research and extensive data analysis, including via a project that saw 3,000 digital activists scan satellite imagery online. Amnesty and Airwars said the cases they had documented probably amounted to violations of international humanitarian law. They also urged coalition members, especially the United States, Britain and France, to put in place an independent investigation mechanism and create a fund to compensate victims and their families. Responding to the report, the coalition said it takes “all reasonable measures to minimise civilian casualties” and that there were still open allegations it was investigating. “Any unintentional loss of life during the defeat of Daesh is tragic,” said Scott Rawlinson, a coalition spokesman in an emailed statement later on Thursday, using an Arabic acronym for ISIL “However, it must be balanced against the risk of enabling Daesh to continue terrorist activities, causing pain and suffering to anyone they choose,” he added <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The US-backed assault to drive the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) from its Syrian capital Raqqa in 2017 killed more than 1,600 civilians, a figure 10 times what the coalition has acknowledged, according to a new report. The investigation, published by Amnesty International and the monitoring group Airwars on Thursday, urged top coalition members to “end almost… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":74,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3661","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-analysis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/middleeastandnorthafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3661","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/middleeastandnorthafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/middleeastandnorthafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/middleeastandnorthafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/74"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/middleeastandnorthafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3661"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/middleeastandnorthafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3661\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3662,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/middleeastandnorthafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3661\/revisions\/3662"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/middleeastandnorthafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3661"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/middleeastandnorthafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3661"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/middleeastandnorthafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3661"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}