War of annihilation
Yüklə 5,63 Mb. Pdf görüntüsü
|
“WAR OF ANNIHILATION” DEVASTATING TOLL ON CIVILIANS, RAQQA – SYRIA
Amnesty International 12
Civilian residents of Raqqa desperate to get their families to safety resorted to paying smugglers, who knew which streets were mined and where snipers were located, to guide them out the city or, as the battle progressed, out of neighbourhoods still under IS control. These smugglers, mostly IS members, charged up to several hundreds of US dollars per person, which many families simply could not afford. Many of those who were unable to pay smugglers and who tried to flee by themselves were killed and injured by mines/IEDs.
Amnesty International’s field investigation carried out in Raqqa after the end of the military operation confirmed the concerns raised in its previous report. The four emblematic cases detailed in this report illustrate a wider pattern, which manifested itself throughout the military operation, as the Coalition neglected to address concerns about civilian casualties raised at the outset. That neglect has continued, with the Coalition failing to adequately investigate and provide reparation, and to provide humanitarian assistance commensurate with the scale of destruction caused.
“WAR OF ANNIHILATION” DEVASTATING TOLL ON CIVILIANS, RAQQA – SYRIA
Amnesty International 13 3.
METHODOLOGY This report is based on field research carried out between 5 and 16 February 2018 in Raqqa, where Amnesty International visited 42 sites of air strikes, artillery and mortar strikes, as well as the places where IS-laid mines/IEDs killed and injured civilians. By the time Amnesty International visited, all neighbourhoods of Raqqa were accessible, though certain roads and buildings could not be accessed due to the possible presence of mines/IEDs. Amnesty researchers visited every neighbourhood in Raqqa and spent considerable time in the neighbourhoods featured in this report, namely the Jezra intersection, Dara’iya, Nazlet al- Shehade, Harat al-Sakhani, al-Fardous and Harat al-Badu. Two Amnesty International researchers interviewed 112 civilian residents of Raqqa. Several survivors, witnesses and relatives of victims were interviewed separately for each case. Most of the interviews were conducted in Raqqa and some in other locations in northern Syria, including Tabqa. All the interviews were carried out in Arabic by Amnesty International staff, in private, without the presence of any authorities or other parties. When participants were willing, Amnesty International made audio-visual recordings of parts of the interviews. Most did not agree to be filmed for fear of future repercussions. The names of some of the witnesses cited in this report have been changed for their safety. Amnesty International also interviewed medical and humanitarian personnel operating in Raqqa and elsewhere in north-eastern Syria, members of the military and security forces and the Raqqa Civil Council, international military and security experts and journalists operating in and around Raqqa. The organisation reviewed and verified open-source written and audio-visual material from a variety of sources, including Coalition member states, and obtained and conducted expert analysis of satellite images of several locations in and around Raqqa city taken on different dates before and since the beginning of the Raqqa military operation. Amnesty International recorded the co-ordinates of each strike covered in this report. Visiting and analysing the scenes of events, coupled with survivors’ and witnesses’ accounts, enabled Amnesty International to attribute incidents to air strikes, artillery or mortar strikes or IS-laid mines/IEDs. In some instances, remnants of munitions found at the scene of a strike and analysed by military experts provided additional information as to which party would have carried it out. 9
9 The presence of widespread unexploded ordnance and mines/IEDs in Raqqa made it too dangerous in most case to search for munitions’ fragments in the rubble of bombed buildings.
“WAR OF ANNIHILATION” DEVASTATING TOLL ON CIVILIANS, RAQQA – SYRIA
Amnesty International 14 4.
CIVILIANS UNDER FIRE “If you stayed you died and if you tried to escape you died.” Munira Hashish, air strike and mines survivor
Coalition forces officials repeatedly stated their intention to minimise harm to civilians when carrying out attacks on IS, in compliance with their obligations under international humanitarian law (IHL). 10 That appears to have been the case for many of the strikes, including some investigated by Amnesty International, in Raqqa. However, for other Coalition attacks, including those detailed in this report, there is a strong prima facie evidence that they violated international humanitarian law and therefore were unlawful. 11 It is impossible to determine conclusively how many strikes were unlawful without further information which only the Coalition can provide. To date, the Coalition has not made public the information necessary to make that determination. 12 Amnesty International has requested the information from the Coalition and was awaiting a response at the time of writing. Field research, including site investigations and interviews with survivors and witnesses, carried out by Amnesty International in Raqqa in a number of cases indicates that Coalition forces failed to take all feasible precautions to minimise harm to civilians, and, in some instances, appear to have launched strikes which were likely to cause excessive civilian harm or which failed to distinguish between military targets and civilians, in violation of the principles of distinction and proportionality. Disproportionate attacks and indiscriminate attacks that kill or injure civilians constitute war crimes. Urban combat in residential areas presents inherent challenges. These challenges were exacerbated in Raqqa by IS’s determination to operate amongst the civilian population and to use civilians as human shields. By the time the Raqqa military campaign got underway, IS’s operational tactics had been documented extensively, including during the military campaign in Mosul (Iraq) which presented similar challenges and was reaching its closing stages as the military operation in Raqqa began. Coalition forces failed to take into account sufficiently the fact that large numbers of civilians were present in every neighbourhood of the city as fighting got under way in those areas. Furthermore, the “patterns of life” – or daily routines – adopted by civilians struggling to survive while a high- intensity urban conflict raged around them, were not particular to Raqqa. These patterns of life had long been observed in other conflicts. They included crowding into homes and shelters, seeking safety in numbers, moving from place to place in search of safety, emerging suddenly from buildings after prolonged
10 “In accordance with the law of armed conflict, the Coalition strikes only valid military targets after considering the principles of military necessity, humanity, proportionality, and distinction”, Lieutenant General Stephen J. Townsend, CJTF-OIR Commanding General, writing in 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/ 11 For more detailed information on the provisions of international humanitarian law (IHL) relevant to this report, see the Legal Framework section, below. 12 Necessary information would include, notably, exact strike locations, weapons used and targeting considerations. In its Strike Releases, the Coalition states that: “CJTF-OIR does not report the number or type of aircraft employed in a strike, the number of munitions dropped in each strike, or the number of individual munition impact points against a target.” Moreover, its definition of what constitutes a strike makes it impossible to know the number of strikes carried out: “… a single aircraft delivering a single weapon against a lone ISIS vehicle is one strike, but so is multiple aircraft delivering dozens of weapons against a group of ISIS-held buildings and weapon systems in a compound…”. See CTJF-OIR Strike Releases, available at http://www.inherentresolve.mil/News/Strike-Releases/ SDF forces for their part have not reported at all on the strikes they carried out. Yüklə 5,63 Mb. Dostları ilə paylaş:
|