Thread by @airwars

'A Coalition in denial.'
More civilians were killed in a single Coalition strike on Raqqa - 33 people according to @Amnesty - than the US-led alliance has so far admitted to in the entire city across five months of fighting (21 deaths in total conceded) airwars.org/news/amnesty-r…

Amnesty's new report, 'War of Annihilation', is required reading for anyone wanting to understand the true impact of intense modern urban warfare on civilians. The detailed field study focuses on 4 families shattered by war amnesty.org/en/documents/m…

Eight people died in a June 28th strike at Raqqa says @Amnesty - Jamal Aswad, along with a neighbour Mohammed Othman, wife Fatima and five of their children, aged 8-17. US-made munitions were recovered at the scene

The Hashish family meanwhile lost 8 members from an ISIS IED explosion at Raqqa, before losing 9 more in a reported July airstrike. “My brothers Hussein and Mohammed and their kids and the neighbors were all killed,” survivor Munira told investigators

The worst case documented by @Amnesty – almost unfathomably distressing – was that of the Badran family, which lost 39 members alongside 10 neighbours in a number of airstrikes during the Raqqa assault amnesty.org/en/latest/news…

The final case reported by @Amnesty involved the Fayads: 16 family members and neighbours were killed in reported airstrikes October 12, 2017 in the Harat al-Badu area of Raqqa - where many civilians had become trapped in the final days of fighting to oust ISIS

"Coalition forces launched air strikes on buildings full of civilians using wide-area effect munitions, which could be expected to destroy the buildings... Had Coalition forces conducted rigorous surveillance prior to the strikes, they would have been aware of their presence"

Amnesty's findings chime with those of @HRW, @UNCoISyria, @Raqqa_SL, @snhr and @syriahr - all of which report major civilian harm last year. Yet @OIRSpox dismisses reports of indiscriminate and disproportionate bombardment as “more or less hypothetical” independent.co.uk/news/world/mid…

For context, locals credibly reported more than 2,000 civilian deaths during battle for Raqqa - the majority from Coalition (US) air and artillery strikes.
Yet of 225 incidents so far assessed by @Coalition, 210 (93%) have been rejected as 'non credible' airwars.org/news/amnesty-r…

In a personal attack, @OIRSpox urged Amnesty Chief Exec @KateAllenAI to “leave the comforts of the UK” and head to Syria & Iraq to see the "painstaking efforts" made to limit harm. @Amnesty investigators @DRovera & @benwalsby did just that - and found the Coalition to be failing.

Correction: We inadvertently misstated the number of civilian fatalities conceded by @CJTFOIR for battle of Raqqa. This in fact stands at 26 admitted killed - still fewer than 33 deaths from one strike reported by @Amnesty, and just 2% of likely 1,400 deaths estimated by Airwars