What happens when the airstrikes fall silent? Powerful work by Airwars investigator @samueloakford for @thedailybeast on Raqqa's forgotten dead - and America's disinterest in knowing the true toll thedailybeast.com/theyre-still-p…
In the city of Raqqa - 80% destroyed in recent fighting according to the UN - the work of recovering the dead continues. 190 unidentified bodies were recently retrieved in one month alone 
Aya knew where her husband and four children died: she barely escaped with her own life at the time. It still took her six months to claim them from the rubble
Aya's husband Khaled and their children Farah, Mohammad, Najah and Hussein (their bodies seen here) have now received a proper burial. But their deaths - among at least 2,000 civilians killed overall in the fighting for Raqqa - remain unacknowledged
The annihilation of ISIS at Raqqa was mostly a US affair. 95% of airstrikes and all artillery strikes were American. In total, at least 20,000 Coalition munitions were dropped on the city in five months. The real number could be even higher
According to Airwars analysis, at least 1,400 civilians likely died in Coalition strikes at Raqqa (hundreds more were killed by ISIS and SDF ground forces.) Yet the US and its allies show little interest in finding the truth: so far they've admitted only 21 deaths
In recent months, we've seen a marked deterioration in the Coalition's willingness to concede civilian harm. 43% of Coalition-assessed events were admitted at Mosul. Just 11% of cases at Raqqa. Almost all cases are now being thrown out as 'non credible'
"It is striking to see the Coalition continue to deny civilian casualties even after independent on the ground investigations found the contrary,” @nadimhoury of Human Rights Watch told us. “If they want to talk to survivors, they only need to visit these areas.”
In Raqqa today, locals struggle to rebuild a shattered city - even as the job of retrieving the dead from shattered neighbourhoods continues. ISIS booby traps and unexploded munitions make that work even harder (image @AFP)
Read our own full report from @samueloakford on Raqqa's plight - along with exclusive recent photos courtesy of @Raqqa_SL and Media Without Borders airwars.org/news/raqqa-a-c…
A-10s are rarely mentioned but were a huge factor in Raqqa. According to US officials, the ground assault aircraft accounted for around 44 percent of all weapon use in Raqqa. By their own admission, this type of urban deployment was unprecedented. airwars.org/news/raqqa-a-c…
“The fight itself was within the urban complex of Raqqa and the pilots had to get creative to figure out ways to strike targets at the bottom of these five-story buildings,” said one top commander about the heavy use of A-10s. airwars.org/news/raqqa-a-c…
ISIS, as the @UNCoISyria and groups like @amnesty have documented, regularly put civilians in extraordinary danger. In Raqqa, they were used as human shields and at times made to wear the same clothes as ISIS fighters. airwars.org/news/raqqa-a-c…
For all the attention paid to Raqqa in the first years of ISIS control, the battle to capture it garnered relatively little press coverage. Journalists cited distance, cost and logistical difficulties, but also an inevitable outcome. ISIS would lose -- but at what cost?
Raqqa was a massive urban operation that left thousands dead; should there be reviews of these urban assaults that incorporate civilian lives? To what degree can a city be destroyed and still considered liberated? airwars.org/news/raqqa-a-c…
It is now 5 months since the end of the Raqqa battle. Accountability is sorely lacking for those killed in the fighting; many bodies, are still buried under rubble; the city is 80% uninhabitable; hundreds of residents have been killed or wounded by IEDS AFTER fighting stopped.
