U.S.
military aircraft bombed a school and a crowded marketplace in
attacks that killed dozens of civilians in Syria this March,
according to a new report from Human Rights Watch. The report, titled
“All Feasible Precautions?: Civilian Casualties in Anti-ISIS
Coalition Airstrikes in Syria,” investigated two airstrikes
conducted in and around the northern Syrian city of Tabqa.
Investigators who visited the sites and interviewed locals and
survivors found that the strikes had caused huge numbers of civilian
deaths. The documentation adds to a drumbeat of criticism about a
U.S. air campaign in Syria that has already been accused of
inflicting massive civilian casualties in support of ground
operations against Islamic State by the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic
Forces.
The
attacks documented in the report include a March 20 airstrike that
targeted a school housing displaced people in the suburban town of
Mansourah, outside of Tabqa, as well as another strike that hit a
packed marketplace in Tabqa City two days later. Investigators from
Human Rights Watch visited the sites of both attacks this July and
collected the names of at least 84 civilians who had died in the
bombings, including 30 children. While witnesses who spoke to
investigators acknowledged that ISIS members, along with their
families, had been around the areas of the bombings, they also said
many civilians were nearby who had no connection to the group.
In
the case of the March 22 marketplace bombing, huge numbers of people
who had been lining up to buy bread at a local bakery were killed by
an airstrike in an attack that may have been targeting a few ISIS
members sitting in a nearby internet cafe. While the U.S.-led
coalition has acknowledged carrying out the March 20 attack against
the school, which it claimed had targeted a suspected weapons storage
facility, it has said that it is still assessing the circumstances
surrounding the marketplace bombing.
Full
report:
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