In the Amnesty and Airwars’s joint April 2019 report “War in Raqqa: Rhetoric versus Reality”, five civilians were reportedly killed in alleged Coalition artillery strikes in Raqqa. Although Airwars assesses single sourced incidents as “weak”, researchers have assessed this incident “fair” due to the depth of material provided by Amnesty.

According to Amnesty field notes there were two strikes. Firstly, an artillery strike on the house where the family was sheltering which prompted them and other neighbours to leave however, a barrage of artillery shells struck the street full of people, killing four members of the family and several other neighbours, and injuring many more. A second artillery strike hit the house where the family was sheltering and killed a displaced woman from Palmira who was also sheltering in the same house.

The victims and their relatives were – according to the report – “sheltering in a house with two other families (some 35 people in all) and the house was hit by a shell”.

In a testimony given by Khaled, a survivor of the strike, “In the space of a few minutes the street was full of dead bodies and injured people on the ground. Many of the victims were displaced people, who, like my family, were running away from the fighting.”

Researchers added that those injured in the strike included the mum, Khadija Hsein al-Ka’oud, 50 who obtained a neck injury and has been left completely paralysed on right side. The two children of Subhi’s, Bashar, 7 who has injures to the back of both his legs and Abdo, 5, who obtained a back injury. The two children now live with their grandparents.

The Abdallah family owned a tyre shop, which was run by Nazlat al-Shehada, however he was killed in the strike.

The incident occured in the afternoon.