(Previous Incident Code: S1361a)

According to family members and local reports, four civilians including, Fawaz Yousef Sulaiman Al-Zureiqat aka Abu Yusuf, died in a Coalition strike on the al Nahda neighbourhood, near the al Imam al Nawawi mosque.

Mr al Zureiqat’s death was also reported by his nephew, who noted that “We note the death of my uncle Fawaz Yousef Sulaiman Al-Zureiqat (Abu Yusuf) today in Raqqah. I am with God and I am returning to Him. We will accept the duty of consolation on Thursday and Friday in my home.”

According to the Amnesty and Airwars’s joint April 2019 report “War in Raqqa: Rhetoric versus Reality”, “An air strike killed four men who were burying their neighbour, Mohammed al-Wadi (47), who had been killed by Islamic State fighters the previous day, in another neighbour’s garden. During the war the dead were buried in parks and gardens, as it was impossible to reach the cemetery, which was outside Raqqa.” The garden belonged to Abdul Rahman al-Qantar.

The father of Abdallah al-Wadi gave a testimony to Amnesty International stating that, “My son was shot dead by Daesh (IS) fighters and the following morning four neighbours were burying him in the garden of a nearby house when an air strike killed all four of them.”

Amnesty International field notes claim that a “small impact radius missile” was fired on the vicinity.

Ismail Akkush was named in Airwars incident CS1535, with two other victims. However due to the extensive Amnesty research discovering he was killed with three other named men, we have removed him from that incident and assessed his death occurred at this location.

In February 2019, the Coalition assessed this event to be non-credible. Their report noted: “After review of all available strike records it was determined that more likely than not civilian casualties did not occur as a result of a Coalition strike.”

In their subsequent monthly civilian casualty reports, however, the US-led Coalition has indicated that the credibility of Amnesty’s civilian harm allegation is in the process of being assessed.