Damaged buildings in the old city of Raqqa, August 19, 2017 (Zohra Bensemra/Reuters)


Local rescuers say they have recovered thousands of people killed by US attacks on Raqqa in northern Syria in 2017.

The city’s emergency response team, supported by American funding, says it has collected more than 2,600 corpses since January. It explains that an identification process has established most are those of civilians killed by US-led airstrikes during the battle to take the city from the Islamic State between June and October 2017.

The US bombing and shelling supported the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces, created in autumn 2015 to take back territory from ISIS in northern and eastern Syria. Airwars says the US was responsible for about 95% of the coalition airstrikes and all of the artillery barrages on Raqqa. At least 21,000 munitions were used in just over four months.

“Raqqa did not deserve this destruction,” says Yasser al-Khamis, who leads the First Responders Team with 37 personnel. “Of course, we understood its fate because it was the capital of ISIS, but we were hoping that the civilian death toll would be lower.”

Coalition spokesman Army Col. Sean Ryan said only 104 unintended civilian casualties have been verified, but “with new information being submitted to the CivCas [civilian casualties] team by a multitude of sources every month, the numbers will presumably go up”.

The First Response Team says that, with a lack of heavy machinery, it will need more than a year to retrieve all the slain.

Donatella Rovera of Amnesty International, who has spent much of the last year in Raqqa, summarizes:

Entire families have been wiped out in places where they thought they would be safe….

If they [the coaliton] had had observation for an adequate period of time, they would have realized that there were civilians in those buildings. Yes, the war probably would have taken more time. But more lives would have been saved.

Ryan responds:

The majority of strikes were executed as planned, but to say this was perfect execution from all sides is meaningless and we understand mistakes were made….

[We were] fighting a ruthless enemy that was systematically killing innocent civilians and unfortunately some were unintentionally killed trying to liberate them, something we tried to avoid.

Airwars, which monitors strikes through local sources and information from social media, puts the civilian death toll in the Raqqa offensive at 1,400, but believes the number could be higher.