(Previous Incident Code: S1213b)

Coalition air raids on Raqqa resulted in the deaths of 9 civilians, including 4 children. The US-led alliance later admitted responsibility for the deaths, following an Amnesty International field investigation.

Amnesty researchers interviewed Munira Hashish who lost 18 members of her family, nine of whom were killed in a Coalition air strike. She stated: “It was when they (the Coalition planes) saw us that they struck. The strike occurred straight after we re-entered the house. It happened just after the call for midday prayer. I remember hearing the call to prayer, then the strike happened. My brothers Hussein and Mohammed and their kids and the neighbours were all killed. Those who were not killed were injured. The only one who survived unharmed is my grandchild, a baby aged four months. I was holding him in my arms and he was not hurt.”

Raqqa is Being Slaughtered Silently had originally reported that 21 civilians, including all members of the Hashish family, were killed in a Coalition airstrike on a home in the Muroor neighbourhood of Raqqa. The report however noted that the incident took place on August 19th and also included family members that, according to the Amnesty report, were in fact “mined by IS, and […] killed by a mortar seemingly launched by the SDF.”

The case was also included in the April 2019 Amnesty/Airwars joint report War in Raqqa: Rhetoric versus Reality (raqqa.amnesty.org): “Munira Hashish and her family lived in Dara’iya, a low-income neighbourhood in western Raqqa. The family was not well off; Munira’s husband, Hussein Ibrahim Hashish, supported the family as best he could by selling vegetables out of a cart. Despite repeated attempts to flee, the Hashish family lost 18 members, mostly women and children, over a two-week period in August. A Coalition air strike killed nine, seven died as they tried to flee via a road which had been mined by IS, and two others were killed by a mortar launched by SDF. “Those who stayed died and those who tried to run away died. We couldn’t afford to pay the smugglers; we were trapped,” Munira Hashish told us. After seven family members were killed by mines set by IS and later nine more were killed by a Coalition air strike, the family was finally able to escape “by walking over the blood of those who were blown up as they tried to flee ahead of us.,” she said.”

In July 2018 the Coalition accepted responsibility, noting: “August 20, 2017, near Raqqah, Syria, via Amnesty International report. During a strike on a reported Daesh position near a residential area allegedly caused civilian casualties. Nine civilians were unintentionally killed.”

The Coalition provided Airwars with the location of this incident, accurate to within a 100 metre box.