Amnesty:

Raqqah Civilian Deaths Admitted by U.S. ‘Tip of the Iceberg’

Date: 08 August 2018 - 21:45

News ID: ۵۶۰۵۸

DAMASCUS (Dispatches) – Seventy-seven Raqqah civilians, including 24 children and 25 women, were killed in airstrikes between June and October 2017, the U.S.-led coalition has acknowledged, but human rights monitor Amnesty International warns the figure is just the "tip of the iceberg.”
The U.S.-led coalition was forced to acknowledge the civilian deaths on July 26 after Amnesty published field research in June highlighting several cases. Previously the coalition had refused to acknowledge civilian casualties.
"The U.S.-led coalition’s admission of responsibility is not surprising given the level of our evidence, and marks a welcome U-turn in its stance on the many civilians killed by its Raqqa offensive,” said Donatella Rovera, Senior Crisis Response Adviser at Amnesty International, in a statement.
"But this is only the tip of the iceberg. Our detailed field investigations covered just four cases – but the many survivors and witnesses we spoke to on the ground pointed to a civilian death toll in the high hundreds.
Amnesty’s report, ‘War of annihilation’: Devastating Toll on Civilians, Raqqah – Syria, called on the coalition to investigate and provide survivors with reparations.
"The plight of many of the survivors is dire,” Benjamin Walsby, Middle East Researcher at Amnesty International, said in the statement.
"Nothing can ever bring back the dead or wipe away the unimaginable trauma. The least the coalition can do right now is provide restorative measures – including compensation and rehabilitation – to victims’ families and survivors, while it sets up the investigations that can bring full justice and reparation.”
The human rights monitor called on the coalition to be transparent on the true scale of civilian harm, and to investigate any failures in intelligence gathering that allowed civilians to become caught up in strikes against Daesh.
The U.S. has been conducting airstrikes against what it says are Daesh targets inside Syria since September 2014 without any authorization from the Damascus government or a United Nations mandate.
The U.S. and its allies have repeatedly been accused of targeting and killing civilians and drawn criticism over their failure to destroy Daesh which they claim to be fighting.
Raqqah fell in the hands of U.S.-sponsored Kurdish militants last year after they managed to drive Daesh terrorists out of the city. They have refused to hand back the control of Raqqah to the Syrian government.

A file photo showing the devastation in Syria's Raqqah