Baladi News – (Kinan Sultan)
The recent weeks of the battle for Raqqa have witnessed the murder of hundreds civilians in the city. The three parties involved, the international coalition, Syria's Democratic Forces (SDF), and ISIS have taken turns killing civilians.
ISIS is responsible for holding civilians. The terrorist organization aims at using residents as human shields to decrease the airstrikes against its forces. However, The international coalition did not care about their safety.
On the other hand, ISIS could be using these civilians to implicate the coalition in more massacres in order to win the sympathy of the Sunnite Arabs and delude them into believing that their war is an existential one.
In this regard, an informed source that declined to be named said, "ISIS is not solely responsible for the large number of civilian victims," blaming the coalition warplanes and SDF in the first place for the murder of civilians.
The evidence, according to the speaker, is that a ceasefire had been signed with ISIS in Tabaqa city before entering the city, which prevented a lot of civilian casualties and destruction.
The speaker attributed the large number of victims to the fact that SDF and the international coalition want to finish the battle quickly due to several considerations, including the existence of Turkish forces on the outskirts of Afrin and of Assad's regime forces in the eastern parts of Raqqa province.
ISIS and the civilians, according to the speaker, are both surrounded within the city. He also indicated that many residents had been shot dead by ISIS snipers while trying to flee ISIS-held areas. In addition, ISIS is trying to exploit civilians as a leverage against the USA and the international coalition, although both of them are indifferent about the lives of the residents inside the city.