Tuesday, May 28, 2019

The US Bombing of Raqqa


Six children aged between 15 months and 13 years were killed on 5 September 2017, when a Coalition air strike hit their home in the town of Raqqa in Syria. The children were just six of the hundreds of civilians killed by the US-led Coalition's military campaign to oust Islamic State in Raqqa. Amnesty International has carried out extensive investigations on the ground in Raqqa and carried out crowdsourced remote analysis to reveal the cost of the Coalition's military campaign. War in Raqqa allows you to explore the results of this investigation into the civilian deaths in Raqqa, which were the result of the Coalition airstrikes on the city fired between June and October 2017.

Amnesty International's analysis includes an interactive map showing the locations in Raqqa of civilian casualties from Coalition strikes. On the map black circles are used to show verified casualties and the grey markers reveal the locations of casualties with 'credible reports'. If you select a marker on the map you can view details of the selected airstrike and its resulting casualties. These details include photos of the victims (where available) and before & after satellite imagery of the location hit by the coalition airstrike.

In order to determine when and where buildings were destroyed in Raqqa Amnesty International crowdsourced the analysis of satellite imagery of the city. Volunteers were asked to examine a timeline of satellite images to pinpoint the dates of a building's destruction. You can read more about this crowdsourced investigation on the project's Strike Tracker website.

No comments: