BEIRUT: Amnesty International said Wednesday it is enlisting the help of thousands of online activists to speed up its investigation into the US-led campaign that drove Daesh militants from their self-styled capital of Raqqa but left the Syrian city in ruins.
The London-based rights group said the new phase of its investigation enables thousands of online activists, using satellite imagery of the city, to map out the destruction over the four-month campaign, which ended in October 2017.
The UN estimates that more than 10,000 buildings were destroyed – or 80 percent of the city. Amnesty’s Strike Tracker campaign, in partnership with Airwars, would help narrow down when and where coalition air and artillery strikes destroyed buildings.
Amnesty hopes to compel the US-led coalition to accept greater responsibility for the destruction and conduct its own investigation into the deaths of hundreds of civilians.
The coalition says it worked to avoid civilian casualties in Raqqa. Col. Sean Ryan, a spokesman for the coalition, said it is “always willing to review if new evidence is reported.”
In an earlier phase of Amnesty’s investigation inside Raqqa, the group provided new evidence that compelled the coalition to acknowledge 77 civilian deaths. In total, the coalition has acknowledged 104 civilian deaths from the hard-fought campaign.
“With bodies still being recovered from the wreckage and mass graves more than a year later, this is just the tip of the iceberg,” said Milena Marin, senior adviser on Amnesty’s Crisis Response team.
“There is a mountain of evidence left to sift through, and the scale of the civilian devastation is simply too large for us to do this alone.”
Some 2,500 bodies have been pulled from the rubble and uncovered in mass graves, and searches are still underway. Amnesty suspects hundreds of civilians died in the campaign.
Raqqa was the capital of the Daesh group’s self-styled caliphate, which once encompassed a third of Syria and Iraq. In recent years the group has been driven from virtually all the territory it once controlled, and holds just a few small, remote pockets in Syria.
Amnesty to expand probe of US-led campaign in Syria’s Raqqa
Amnesty to expand probe of US-led campaign in Syria’s Raqqa
- UN estimates that more than 10,000 buildings were destroyed – or 80 percent of the city
- Raqqa was the capital of the Daesh group’s self-styled caliphate
Syria Kurds impose curfew in Qamishli ahead of govt forces entry
- The curfew came after Syrian security personnel entered the mixed Kurdish-Arab city of Hasakah and the countryside around the Kurdish town of Kobani on Monday
QAMISHLI: Kurdish forces imposed a curfew on Kurdish-majority Qamishli in northeastern Syria on Tuesday, ahead of the deployment of government troops to the city, an AFP team reported.
The curfew came after Syrian security personnel entered the mixed Kurdish-Arab city of Hasakah and the countryside around the Kurdish town of Kobani on Monday, as part of a comprehensive agreement to gradually integrate the Kurds’ military and civilian institutions into the state.
The Kurds had ceded territory to advancing government forces in recent weeks.
An AFP correspondent saw Kurdish security forces deployed in Qamishli and found the streets empty of civilians and shops closed after the curfew came into effect early on Tuesday.
It will remain in force until 6:00 am (0300 GMT) on Wednesday.
The government convoy is expected to enter the city later on Tuesday and will include a limited number of forces and vehicles, according to Marwan Al-Ali, the Damascus-appointed head of internal security in Hasakah province.
The integration of Kurdish security forces into the interior ministry’s ranks will follow, he added.
Friday’s deal “seeks to unify Syrian territory,” including Kurdish areas, while also maintaining an ongoing ceasefire and introducing the “gradual integration” of Kurdish forces and administrative institutions, according to the text of the agreement.
It was a blow to the Kurds, who had sought to preserve the de facto autonomy they exercised after seizing vast areas of north and northeast Syria in battles against Daesh during the civil war, backed by a US-led coalition.
Mazloum Abdi, head of the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), had previously said the deal would be implemented on the ground from Monday, with both sides to pull forces back from frontline positions in parts of the northeast, and from Kobani in the north.
He added that a “limited internal security force” would enter parts of Hasakah and Qamishli, but that “no military forces will enter any Kurdish city or town.”
