Geolocation
Airwars assessment
Raqqa is Being Slaughtered Silently reported the death of a young civilian male following an alleged Coalition strike on an ISIL prison. The group noted on August 28th: “Martyrdom of Khalil Al-Gharieb, detained by the organisation Daesh due to an international Coalition warplane raid several days before on the organization’s prison in the city of Raqqa.”
In an investigation published in October 2016, the Syrian Network reported: “Fixed-wing international coalition forces warplanes fired missiles that targeted a center for ISIS in Al Raqqa city, which is held by the group. The bombardment resulted in the killing of Mr. Khalil Gharbi Al Thaher who had been arrested by ISIS since June 2016. We believe that this incident doesn’t constitute a breach to the international humanitarian law because the target was a military center for ISIS. We included it in the report as one of the incidents that resulted in casualties even though it was within the domain that the international humanitarian law allows for.”
Given reported British incidents in the area that day, Airwars flagged the incident to the UK’s MoD which said ” we can confirm that there was no UK involvement” in the event.
In their May 2020 civilian casualty report, the US-led Coalition assessed reports that they were responsible for civilian harm in this strike as “non-credible”, stating that no Coalition actions were conducted in the geographical area at that time.
The local time of the incident is unknown.
The victims were named as:
Summary
Sources (2) [ collapse]
Media
from sources (2) [ collapse]
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Khalil Al-Gharieb, killed in an alleged Coalition airstrike on an ISIL prison at Raqqa lte August 2016 (via Raqqa is Being Slaughtered Silently)
US-led Coalition Assessment:
Civilian casualty statements
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Aug. 25, 2016, in Raqqah, Syria via Airwars report. After a review of all available records it was assessed that no Coalition actions were conducted in the geographical area that corresponds to the report of civilian casualties. 3034/CS301 37SEV008784
Original strike reports
A number of Coalition strikes are reported near Raqqa from August 24th 2016 onwards. However these were reported as being targeted at oil facilities.
‘Thursday 25 August – Tornados struck a Daesh group in eastern Syria, while Typhoons bombed a terrorist-held building in western Iraq…Typhoons, supported as is normal by a Voyager air refuelling tanker, patrolled the Euphrates valley west of Ramadi on Thursday 25 August, where they used a Paveway IV to attack a Daesh-held building on the northern river-bank. Over Syria, a pair of Tornados used two Brimstone missiles to engage a number of terrorists spotted occupying positions under trees in farmland in the east of the country.’