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Airwars Assessment
(Previous Incident Code: S695)
Twelve civilians including up to eight women and four children died and dozens more were wounded in alleged Coalition airstrikes on Al Salhiya village, according to local sources.
The Syrian Network for Human Rights put the death toll at ten victims including four children and four women – and blamed the Coalition, while Bassam Jaara specifically blamed a “US bombardment”.
In a video published by the IS media agency Al’Amaq, a long haired bearded man says [at 1’07]: “The crusader coalition today carried out a raid on al Salhiya village north of Raqqa city. They bombed a home belonging to Muslims. When the residents of the village came to rescue the family from under the rubble the planes came back again and bombed the gathering with two further raids killing many more. We have dead and injured children and muslims stuck under the rubble.”
Raqqa is Being Slaughtered Silently published a series of graphic images from the video which depicted children among the casualties.
Al Raqqa truth named 11 victims of a Coalition strike.
Raqqa is Being Slaughtered Silently named an additional victim and said the death toll had risen to 12.
An August 2017 Amnesty International report documented a civilian casualty incident on a farm in Al Salhiya/Hukumya area, north of Raqqa, killing 14 members of the same family and severely wounding two children on the evening of May 11th, 2017. Aiwars researchers have assessed that given the same specific location of the airstrike and the similar number of men, women and children perished and injured, this event is likely related. It is important to note that there is a slight discrepancy in the reporting on the exact date of the airstrike: most local sources state that the civilians were killed on May 9th, whereas Amnesty pinpoints the date of the incident at May 11th.
Amnesty International’s researchers interviewed two survivors of the strike, aged 14 and 15, who stated that apart from the 14 family members who lived there no one had been present in the farm. One of the children stated to Amnesty: “The planes were circling all night and we could not even approach the house to get the two injured children out from under the rubble until the following day.”
When the organization’s researchers visited the site it was clear to them that the destruction was a result of air strikes. Additionally, the field researchers found a fragment of a GPS-guided air-delivered bomb.
Victims
Family members (5)
Individuals
Key Information
Geolocation Notes
Reports of the incident mention the village of Al Salhiya (الصالحية), for which the generic coordinates are: 34.7146658, 40.7555866. Due to limited satellite imagery and information available to Airwars, we were unable to verify the location further.