Initially, this incident was reported on by several sources as mass artillery shelling in the Dar’iya neighbourhood in the city of Raqqa, in which 6 to 12 civilians, including a maximum of 6 children and 2 women died and 9 were wounded. During investigations of this event for the April 2019 joint Airwars and Amnesty report War in Raqqa: Rhetoric versus Reality (www.raqqa.amnesty.org), Amnesty field researchers were able to identify 4 separate locations in where civilians (some of the same family in 2 different locations) were killed in artillery shelling on the morning of the 10th of June, described in CS956a, CS956b, CS956c and CS995. They all took place in Safa Street, in the neighbourhood Dar’iya.
A prior August report by Amnesty International featured an interview with Ahmad Mahmoud who was himself injured in the shelling along with a boy and girl who were in the same room. He stated that at least 12 people were killed by the shelling between 1 and 2pm: “I can only speak about the 12 people I know who were killed in five houses near where I was. I don’t know if the other shells killed more people.”
Most sources (M3nati and Ahmad Al Shibli) blamed the Coalition for the artillery strikes, some pointed to the SDF (Al Jisirtv and the Syrian Network for Human Rights), but the Coalition has confirmed to Airwars that it was the only force using artillery on Raqqa during the battle. Sources were able to name a number of people who we’ve now attributed to the aforementioned 4 separate incidents: Mahmoud al-Ahmad al-Sulaiman al-Mala Ali (age unknown, male), Rajha al-Ahmad al-Sulayman al-Mala Ali (age unknown, female), Tabarak (5 years old, female, daughter of Rajha al-Mahmoud al-Ahmad), Muna (1 year old, female, daughter of Rajha al-Mahmoud al-Ahmad), Rajha al-Mahmoud al-Ahmad (55 years old, female, mother of Mahmoud al-Suleiman al-Sulaiman al-Mala Ali), Ibrahim (adult, male), son of Ibrahim (1 year old, male), daughter of Husein Kenjo (8 years old, female), daughter of Husein Kenjo (10 years old, female), Suleiman Omar al Suleiman (age unknown, male), Rahmoun (age unknown, male), Hisham (age unknown, male).
The joint Amnesty/Airwars report War in Raqqa: Rhetoric versus Reality notes: An artillery shell struck a third house of the Malla Ali family in Safa Street, killing an 82-year-old man and his eight-year-old grandson and injuring the man’s wife who later died of her injuries. One of the survivors, named Farhan, spoke to Amnesty researchers: “I was sleeping and woke up to chaos and panic. My daughter was screaming. Almost all the houses in our street were bombed. There were many dead and many more injured.”
In July 2019 the Coalition announced that it had asssessed this allegation of civilian harm to be non-credible. Their monthly civilian casualty report noted: “fter a review of available information it was assessed that no Coalition actions were conducted in the geographical area that corresponds to the report of civilian casualties.”
The incident occured in the morning.
