(Previous Incident Code: S1437)

Up to five civilians, including one child and three women, were reportedly killed by an alleged Coalition strike at some point during the Raqqa Campaign, Raqqa is Being Slaughtered Silently (RBSS) and Amnesty and Airwars’s joint April 2019 report “War in Raqqa: Rhetoric versus Reality” reported.

The first report was made by RBSS who reported the death of a man and his wife after they were missing for several months. RBSS said that they were killed in a previous bombing by international coalition aircraft on the city of Al-Raqqa.

In April 2019, Amnesty International and Airwars published a joint report from the battle of Raqqa, which echoed RBSS report about the death of the married couple while interviews with an eyewitness told Amnesty’s researchers that a total of five victims were killed. As, besides from the married couple, two women and one child were also killed.

While only the man and two women are identified by name, the eyewitness, who was the child of the married couple, told Amnesty that a child and possibly his mother (as she was found cuddling the little boy) were among the remaining two victims.

It is currently unclear at what point during the Raqqa campaign that the victims died. Amnesty and Airwars’ research suggests that the incident took place somewhere between September 19th and October 10th.

Interviews with eyewitnesses also indicated that there were no Daesh fighters in that building.

On March 10, 2022 in the CJTF-OIR Civilian Casualty Report, the Coalition listed this incident as occurring on Sept. 23, 2017 and reported this incident to be “non-credible”, stating that “After review of all available evidence it was determined that more likely than not civilian casualties did not occur as a result of a Coalition strike.”