Baladi - Agencies
The rights group Amnesty International issued a report says the attacks by the U.S.-led coalition against Islamic State in the Syrian city of Raqqa last year may have broken international law by endangering the lives of civilians, according to Reuters.
During its campaign to recapture the group’s Syrian capital, the coalition did not take enough account of civilians or take the precautions necessary to minimize harm to them, Amnesty said in a report.
It documented the cases of four families whose experiences it said were emblematic of wider patterns and provided “prima facie evidence that several coalition attacks which killed and injured civilians violated international humanitarian law”.
During the battle of Raqqa, IS fighters made it harder for the coalition offensive to avoid civilian deaths by operating among them and using them as human shields, Amnesty said.
Amnesty said it had interviewed 112 civilian residents of Raqqa during field research there in February, visiting the sites of 42 air, artillery and mortar strikes.
It said that in the four cases detailed in its report, air strikes using powerful munitions had hit buildings full of civilians who had been staying there for long periods.
It focused on the Aswad family, which it said lost eight members in a single air strike, the Hashish family, which it said lost 18 members, the Badran family which it said lost 39 members, and the Fayad family which it said lost 16 members.
“Witnesses reported that there were no fighters in the vicinity at the time of the attacks. Such attacks could be either direct attacks on civilians or civilian objects or indiscriminate attacks,” the report said of the four cases studied, adding that such attacks amounted to war crimes.
Reporting by Angus McDowall; Reuters.