HRW calls for investigation into deadly US airstrikes in Syria's Raqqa

The Human Rights Watch report says adequate precautions to avoid civilian deaths may not have been taken.

Entrance to the Badia school that was struck by coalition aircraft on March 20, 2017.
Ole Solvang/Human Rights Watch

Entrance to the Badia school that was struck by coalition aircraft on March 20, 2017.

At least 84 Syrian civilians in Syria’s Raqqa province were killed in airstrikes carried out by the US-led coalition, a new report by Human Rights Watch says.

The strikes in March were believed to have targeted Daesh fighters, but instead hit a bakery, a market and a school housing displaced civilians. Nearly 30 children were among those killed.

The rights group is now calling for an investigation into the attacks, saying adequate precautions to avoid civilian deaths may not have been taken.

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The 42-page report, which was based its conclusions on an on-the-ground investigation into the attacks, said: “Human Rights Watch found that ISIS [Daesh] fighters were at these sites, but so were dozens, perhaps hundreds, of civilians.”

“The coalition should conduct thorough, prompt, and impartial investigations of the attacks, do everything feasible to prevent similar attacks, and provide compensation or condolence payments to people who suffered losses due to the coalition’s operations,” it added.

The coalition’s Combined Joint Task Force had said the targeting of the Mansourah school, which reportedly housed many civilians unaffiliated to Daesh, was based on intelligence that the building was being used as a Daesh headquarters and weapons-storage facility.

There was no information to suggest that civilians were in the school, the coalition said.

The coalition said it was still assessing allegations that its aircraft killed dozens of civilians in the Tabqa market attack, but “the circumstances of the attack make it unlikely that anyone else was responsible,” the HRW report states.

Ole Solvang/Human Rights Watch

The ruins of a market and bakery in Tabqa after an airstrike on March 22, 2017.

US-led coalition airstrikes have killed at least 1,400 Syrian civilians since 2014, according to the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

In March, US aircraft struck a mosque near Al Jinah, west of Aleppo, reportedly killing dozens of civilians.

A a subsequent military investigation later found that the authority that approved the strikes did not know that the target was a mosque.

Ole Solvang, the deputy emergencies director at Human Rights Watch, said the incident demonstrated that the coalition “need to take a long, hard look at the intelligence they are using to verify its targets.”

“If the coalition had visited the sites and talked to witnesses they would have found plenty of evidence that civilians were killed in these attacks,” Solvang said.

“The coalition should follow our lead, conduct full investigations, and find ways to make its civilian casualty assessments more accurate.”

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