In Amnesty and Airwars’ joint April 2019 report “War in Raqqa: Rhetoric versus Reality”, three civilians were reportedly killed in alleged Coalition artillery strikes in Raqqa.

Although Airwars generally assesses single sourced incidents as “weak”, our researchers have assessed this incident “fair” due to the depth of material provided by Amnesty.

The Amnesty report noted that “Ahmad Mohammed al-Hammadi, a mathematics teacher, 65, his wife Zahra Mahammed al-Khamri, 50, and their son Abderrahman Ahmad al-Hammadi, 20, were killed by an artillery strike on their home. A month earlier their other son, Abdallah, was killed in another artillery strike while fetching water from a well.”

The daughter of the victim, Maha, told Amnesty in testimony that “Only me and my sister survived. We have no one left. My brother Abdallah was killed by the well when he went to fetch water, then my parents and my brother Aabderrahman, Abdallah’s twin, were killed when our home was hit by a shell.”

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 incident occured around midday.