Airwars | Occupy World Writes

The Post report relies heavily on figures from the airstrike watchdog Airwars—without stating the group’s actual casualty numbers.

Aftermath of US led air strikes in Raqqa (Photo: @Raqqa_SL/Twitter)

By Brett Wilkins, staff writer for Common Dreams. Published 11-19-2020

The Washington Post on Wednesday published an extraordinary interactive report that names hundreds of civilians killed by coalition airstrikes during the U.S.-led war against the so-called Islamic State.

The report, which contains harrowing survivor testimonies, draws upon data from the U.S. military and the U.K.-based journalistic monitor group Airwars to name each victim, as well as when and where they were killed. The paper mentions “thousands” of civilian casualties since President Barack Obama launched the war against ISIS militants in Iraq and Syria in 2014, but focuses only on the approximately 1,400 deaths acknowledged by both the Pentagon and Airwars. Continue reading →

“Coalition forces razed Raqqa, but they cannot erase the truth.”

By Julia Conley, staff writer for Common Dreams. Published 4-25-2019

“Coalition forces razed Raqqa, but they cannot erase the truth,” said Amnesty’s Donatella Rovera. The group’s behind the report called upon the Coalition forces to “end their denial about the shocking scale of civilian deaths and destruction caused by their offensive” in 2017. (Photo: Amnesty International)

An “unprecedented” new study released on Thursday revealed that the U.S.-led bombing campaign on Raqqa, Syria in 2017—which one military commander at the time claimed was the “most precise air campaign in history”—killed an estimated 1,600 innocent civilians while leveling the city on a scale unparalleled in recent decades.

The research collated almost two years of investigations into the assault on Raqqa, the groups said in a statement, and “gives a brutally vivid account” of the enormous number of civilian lives lost as “a direct result” of thousands of coalition air strikes and tens of thousands of US artillery strikes in Raqqa from June to October 2017. Continue reading →

Occupy World Writes

The Movement Continues – Globally

Tag Archives: Airwars

US-Led Bombing Campaign in Syria Killed 1,600 Civilians and Left Raqqa ‘Most Destroyed City in Modern Times’: Study

“Coalition forces razed Raqqa, but they cannot erase the truth.”