In a major casualty incident, between 10 and 50 civilians died, including entire families, and dozens more were wounded in an alleged Coalition airstrike in the Al Bousraya area of Raqqa, according to local sources. Since further research was conducted by Amnesty it appears only 16 civilians were living in the building which was struck.
Reports said that the strike hit a civilian home/building which contained 50 civilians. According to Raqqa is Being Slaughtered Silently, nearly all 50 people were killed, including two children. The source said that IS had gathered the civilians inside the building.
Rt.ararabic put the death toll at nine. However the majority of sources placed it much higher. Al Raqqa Truth said 15 died and dozens more were wounded, while Sharqiya voice and Zamanalwasl put the figure at 20, blaming the Coalition.
According to Sound and Picture, “initial reports indicated the death and wounding of approximately 50 civilians”, including entire families. It said most of the victims were women and children.
Muheet added that “according to data from social media sites, the shelling focused on one of the neighbourhood’s houses, which housed more than 50 people, including children and women from one family”.
@freedom_Raqqa1, also attributing the event to the Coalition, put the death toll at 50 non-combatants, though this appears to have merged death and injury numbers.
In field research done by Amnesty, it appears that “A Coalition airstrike destroyed a four-storey building at 3 am, killing 10 of the 16 residents in their sleep. Two of the victims, Hammada and Sabah Hamzawi, had lost their 13-year-old daughter in an artillery strike on their home a month earlier.”
An airstrike hit Shaban al Assad Building on the night of 1st August at 3am in the morning. The building was according to Amnesty a four storey building, with shops on the ground floor. The building was empty, apart from 16 people. Ten were killed and six survived. IS had a medical point 50m in front of building that was hit.
An engineer that Amnesty researchers met whilst in Raqqa said that IS used to land a toy drone on the roof of the store.
A relative of the victims, Amer Hamzawi, told Amnesty in a testimony that “My uncle and aunt were still mourning the loss of their daughter and then they suffered the same unjust fate”.
Ammar Al-Abidi, a survivor of the strike told researchers “I spent six hours under the rubble waiting to be rescued. I don’t wish this even on my worst enemy.”
According to Ammar, six others survied. Amar, his three sisters, Faisal al Ajaj and the house owner’s brother, Abdalla al Assad.
IS had – according to the survivor – expelled the Hamzawis from their home elsewhere in the city and forced them to live in the building that suffered the airstrike, along with the other occupants killed in the strike.
On March 10, 2022 in the CJTF-OIR Civilian Casualty Report, the Coalition reported this incident to be “non-credible”, stating that “After review of all available evidence it was determined that more likely than not civilian casualties did not occur as a result of a Coalition strike.”
The incident occured around dawn.
