US-led 2017 blitz on Syria's Raqa killed 1,600 civilians: report via SABCNewsOnline
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.
“Many of the air bombardments were inaccurate and tens of thousands of artillery strikes were indiscriminate,” said Donatella Rovera, crisis response advisor at Amnesty. Rovera said a number of reasons explained the high casualty toll among civilians, including failing intelligence and surveillance, and the use of inappropriate weaponry.In many cases, buildings in Raqa were targeted following insufficient remote surveillance, Rovera said, killing entire families that were still living or sheltering in them.
Amnesty also criticised the extensive use of artillery in the battle for Raqa, which one US military official boasted was the US’s highest since the Vietnam war. One of them was a project called Strike Trackers, which employed digital volunteers from 124 countries to identify each one of the 11,000 destroyed buildings in Raqa by analysing more than two million frames of satellite imagery.Civilians have started returning to the city but basic infrastructure remains almost non-existent. Raqa was described as 80 percent destroyed after the offensive.
The coalition responded by saying it investigated reports submitted to it by various sources, including Amnesty, and complied with international humanitarian law.
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