(Previous Incident Code: S1395a)

Initially the death of one civilian male was reported in this incident: a doctor named Alaa El Din Hassan Hamam died in Raqqah city following US-led Coalition airstrikes, local sources said. According to a report by Al Rafed, Dr. Alaa El Din Hassan Hamam provided medical assistance for the injured in Raqqah until he died. His brother told Al Rafed: “He and his wife were in the last period providing first aid and dressing and stitching the wounded and injured in their homes according to the available possibilities because of the situation in Raqqah and was trying to bury the martyrs who are the result of artillery shelling and air and the young people with values in the city.” He was unable to be buried as his family fled the city after the airstrike that killed him, his brother added – “Unfortunately they left Al-Raqqa without burying my brother or seeing his body.” All sources blamed the US-led Coalition for his death.

During investigations of this event for the April 2019 joint Airwars and Amnesty report War in Raqqa: Rethoric versus Reality (www.raqqa.amnesty.org), Amnesty field researchers found that 6 other people were killed in this strike. 5 of them were members of the Al Aalu family, who were injured in an earlier strike (more information on that incident here: CS1570), they had fled to the building and were receiving treatment from the doctor. Abu Hamed, a relative and owner of the house together with AbdelMin’aam, told Amnesty researchers about the family: “They had been displaced by the war and were staying in our house. The three elderly people had been injured in a strike elsewhere and the doctor had come to treat them. They were all killed when our house was bombed.”

One invididual, Mohammed AbdelMin’aam al-Hmaidi, brother of the testifying relative Abu Hamed, was reported killed in a separate incident together with his father: CS1602. Airwars has merged these 2 incident under this code, as Amnesty research has found that they were killed in the same strike as Dr. Alaa El Din Hassan Hamam and the Al Aalu family, which would bring the total number of people killed in this strike to 8. The original Airwars report (CS1602) for their deaths read as follows:

“Local media reported that Mohammed Abdel Moneim Al-Humaidi died and his father Abdel-Moneim Al-Humaidi was injured following alleged US-led Coalition airstrikes on Raqqah. There was limited information due to only three reports on the incident. Two of three sources attributed the loss of civilian life to US-led Coalition strikes, while the remaining source Marsad Al Hasaka referred only to “bombing”. The two deaths are also mentioned in event CS1594, with some sources claiming the event occurred a day earlier.”