Geolocation
Airwars assessment
Twenty two civilians including 15 women reportedly died and dozens wounded in alleged Coalition airstrikes behind al-Andalus bakery in the city of Al-Raqqa. There is – according to research done by Amnesty and Airwars – no precise location for the building.
According to a tweet from @PalmyraRev1 it was mostly “women, children and the elderly” who were killed in the bombardment. Nearly all sources blamed the International Coalition for the attack.
Shaam News Network and other sources described the 22 killed as displaced citizens who had fled the city of Palmyra due to Russian and Assad regime strikes on that city and its environs. Activists said that the people killed comprised of two families, the Mrawah and al-Tawab families, victims are named below.
Shaam News Network pointed out the possibility that the names given may be different to the names of the people that had died, due to the media blackout and the strict censorship imposed by IS on the media. Following extensive Amnesty field research and interviews they uncovered “Four members of the Mrawah family were killed: Jihad Mrawah’s wife, Ali Mrawah’s wife (Ali is son of Jihad’s brother), Hsein Mrawah (father of Jihad and Grandfather of Ali) and Jihad’s mother.”
The evidence provided by Airwars corroborates the Amnesty and Airwars’s joint April 2019 report “War in Raqqa: Rhetoric versus Reality” where it states,”At least 22 civilians were killed when an air strike struck outside their home and the taxi outside smashed into the house as visitors were getting off and into the house, killing both the hosts and the visitors.”
The report adds that the victims were killed when plane struck outside their home and a taxi outside smashed into a building as visitors were getting being dropped off and entering the building to visit the Tawab family, also from Palmira. Members from both families were killed.
In July 2019 the Coalition announced that it had assessed this allegation of civilian harm to be non-credible. Their monthly civilian casualty report noted: “After a review of available information it was assessed that no Coalition actions were conducted in the geographical area that corresponds to the report of civilian casualties.”
The local time of the incident is unknown.
The victims were named as:
Family members (4)
Family members (7)
The victims were named as:
Geolocation notes (1) [ collapse]
Reports of the incident mention the city of Raqqa, for which the generic coordinates are: 35.9505639, 39.0094148. One source (Smart) mentions clashes in Hisham ibn Abdul Malik neighbourhood, for which the coordinates are: 35.940907, 39.019103. The Amnesty International report concluded that the building was “by Hadiqat al-Rashid, behind al-Andalus bakery”, however there was no precise location for building. “mkhbz alandls” is the location of the bakery.
Summary
Sources (20) [ collapse]
Media
from sources (1) [ collapse]
Attached to this civilian harm incident is a provisional reconciliation of the Pentagon's declassified assessment of this civilian harm allegation, based on matching date and locational information.
The declassified documents were obtained by Azmat Khan and the New York Times through Freedom of Information requests and lawsuits filed since March 2017, and are included alongside the corresponding press release published by the Pentagon. Airwars is currently analysing the contents of each file, and will update our own assessments accordingly.
US-led Coalition Assessment:
Civilian casualty statements
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Aug. 7, 2017, in Raqqa, Syria, via Amnesty International report. After a review of available information it was assessed that no Coalition actions were conducted in the geographical area that corresponds to the report of civilian casualties.
Original strike reports
For August 7th-8th, the Coalition reported: “Near Raqqah, 25 strikes engaged 17 ISIS tactical units and destroyed 37 fighting positions, two command and control nodes, two weapons caches, two vehicles, and a weapons depot.” It additionally reported that “On Aug. 7, near Raqqah, Syria, six strikes engaged three ISIS tactical units and destroyed three fighting positions, an ISIS communications tower, and a mortar system.”