“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 →