War of annihilation
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“WAR OF ANNIHILATION” DEVASTATING TOLL ON CIVILIANS, RAQQA – SYRIA
Amnesty International 55 aware of any Coalition investigators having visited any strike sites anywhere in the city or having interviewed survivors or witnesses of other strikes. Such shortcomings in the investigation methodology appear to be a significant contributing factor to its dismissal of almost all the reports of civilian fatalities and casualties. 122
Children riding a bicycle among destroyed buildings in Raqqa. © Amnesty International
122 “The Coalition conducted a total of 29,070 strikes between August 2014 and January 2018. During this period, the total number of reports of possible civilian casualties was 2,015. The total number of credible reports of civilian casualties during this time period was 218.” The figures refer to the total number of acknowledged Coalition strikes in all locations in Iraq and Syria. There is no specific report just for Raqqa. CJTF-OIR “Monthly civilian casualty report”, February 22 2018, available at http://www.inherentresolve.mil/News/News- Releases/News-Article-View/Article/1447350/cjtf-oir-monthly-civilian-casualty-report/
“WAR OF ANNIHILATION” DEVASTATING TOLL ON CIVILIANS, RAQQA – SYRIA
Amnesty International 56 7.
DIRE HUMANITARIAN SITUATION “Why were those who spent to so much on a costly military campaign which destroyed the city not providing the relief so desperately needed?” 123
Raqqa residents
Eight months on from the end the military campaign, most of Raqqa’s residents remain displaced. Those who have returned live in dire conditions among the rubble and the stench of corpses trapped beneath. Unexploded ordnance litter the city and continues to kill and injure residents. At the time of writing, some 100,000 people had returned to Raqqa since the end of hostilities in October 2017, despite the danger posed by unexploded ordnance – mostly IEDs left by IS fighters, but also unexploded munitions dropped by Coalition forces – rendering the city unsafe. Virtually every returnee that Amnesty International interviewed in Raqqa posed a simple question: why were those who spent to so much on a costly military campaign which destroyed the city not providing the relief so desperately needed? Chief among their priorities was the provision of equipment needed to recover the bodies and remove the explosive devices trapped in the rubble. Coalition officials have so far failed to acknowledge the extent of the damage wrought on the city mostly by Coalition strikes. The wholesale destruction wrought upon every almost street in Raqqa as a result of artillery and air strikes stands in stark contrast to Coalition claims about precision strikes. 124 UN experts, Amnesty International’s researchers who conducted the investigation, and seasoned war correspondents found the level of destruction in Raqqa worse than anything previously witnessed in other wars. 125 In April the UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency stated that “the UN team entering Raqqa city were shocked by the level of destruction, which exceeded anything they had never seen before”. 126
the fighting is over,” promised Major General Rupert Jones, CJTF-OIR Deputy Commander, as the battle to oust IS gathered momentum in July 2017. 127 Since combat’s end, however, the humanitarian assistance 123
These were sentiments that many Raqqa residents expressed to Amnesty International during interviews on the ground in Raqqa during February 2018. 124 “Reports of civilian casualties in the war against ISIS are vastly inflated”, Foreign Policy, 15 September 2017, available at http://foreignpolicy.com/2017/09/15/reports-of-civilian-casualties-from-coalition-strikes-on-isis-are-vastly-inflated-lt-gen-townsend-cjtf-oir/ 125
“24 hours of coverage still wouldn’t do justice to the total devastation across Raqqa. I’ve never seen anything like it”. BBC correspondent Quentin Sommerville, 17 September 2017, available at https://twitter.com/sommervilletv/status/909456790223540229?lang=en 126 “First UN humanitarian mission to Raqqa city post-ISIS”, UNHCR, 5 April 2018, available at http://www.unhcr.org/sy/11607-first-un- humanitarian-mission-raqqa-city-post-isis.html and “The team observed an extremely high level of destruction, with nearly 70 per cent of buildings destroyed or damaged”, “Syria Crisis: Northeast Syria”, Situation Report No. 23 (15 March – 15 April 2018), UN OCHA, 18 April 2018, available at https://www.humanitarianresponse.info/en/operations/whole-of-syria/document/syria-crisis-north-east-syria-situation- report-no-23-15-march-%E2%80%93 127 Rupert Jones discussing the battle for Raqqa, ArtaFmRadio, 24 July, available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XJzQ3B1AIW0 Yüklə 5,63 Mb. Dostları ilə paylaş:
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