Syrien: Immer mehr zivile Tote durch US-Luftangriffe
In addition to the tens of thousands killed by regime aerial attacks and thousands slain by Russian bombing, Syrians are now facing a “staggering” rise in deaths from the strikes of the US-led coalition.
Airwars, which tracks the civilian casualties in Iraq and Syria, has documented the UN’s claim with documentation of an increase of 30% in deaths from January to May 2017 over all of 2016.
In May alone, coalition airstrikes killed 23% more people in Syria than in April, with at least 57 women and 52 children amid the casualties in both Iraq and Syria. That rise followed an incident in March in which up to 200 people were slain in a single US attack near ISIS-held Raqqa.
Alex Hopkins of Airwars say that there are now up to six “incidents” in Raqqa, the Islamic State’s central position in Syria, as the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces pursue a final offensive. In one bombing on June 5, up to 21 civilians were reportedly killed when the coalition hit boats trying to ferry people to safety across the Euphrates River.
Hopkins says the Raqqa deaths are “even more troubling” than those in Iraq’s second city Mosul, where Iraqi forces are closing on victory over ISIS with the assistance of US strikes:
To some extent, given how densely populated parts of Mosul city are, it was expected that civilian death tolls would be high. But the villages and towns that surround Raqqa governorate’s capital hold comparably fewer civilians – and yet numerous and large-scale casualty events have become the norm since March.
In Raqqa, there appears to be little correlation between what is being destroyed and civilian fatalities. In a recent study, I discovered that the number of targets bombed in Raqqa decreased by 39% from February to March. Consequently, we expected to see civilian deaths decrease – instead they rose more than fivefold to an all-time high of at least 275 civilians likely killed in the area.
In short, more civilians are dying in Raqqa even when fewer targets are hit.
For the first time since Russia’s intervention in September 2015, the coalition is now killing more civilians than Moscow, with 2 1/2 times more “casualty events” in May.