UN: ‘Staggering’ loss of life reported from U.S.-led air raids on ISIS-held Raqqa

BEIRUT – Intensified airstrikes by the U.S.-led coalition have caused a “staggering” loss of civilian life around the Islamic State’s Syrian stronghold of Raqqa, a United Nations investigator said Wednesday.

A U.S.-backed ground force entered the city with the help of coalition air raids last week, three years after the area became a hub from which Islamic State leaders planned expansion throughout the region and attacks around the world.

Paulo Pinheiro, the chairman of the U.N. Commission of Inquiry on Syria, said Wednesday that coalition airstrikes had now deepened suffering in a city already under the yoke of extremist fighters.

“We note in particular that the intensification of airstrikes, which have paved the ground for an SDF advance in Raqqa, has resulted not only in staggering loss of civilian life, but has also led to 160,000 civilians fleeing their homes and becoming internally displaced,” he said.

Human rights and monitoring groups have warned for months of the rising human cost of the coalition’s air war in Syria and Iraq as Islamic State forces bed in among densely populated civilian areas across what remains of the group’s so-called caliphate.

“The imperative to fight terrorism must not, however, be undertaken at the expense of civilians who unwillingly find themselves living in areas where ISIL is present,” Pinheiro added, using an acronym for the Islamic State.

The U.S.-led coalition includes military personnel from dozens of countries, including Britain, France and Australia. According to its latest figures, at least 484 civilians have been unintentionally killed by coalition airstrikes since June 2014.

Figures kept by the Britain-based tracking group Airwars put that figure eight times higher, claiming that the minimum number of casualties during that period was more than 3,800.

The nonprofit group last month has shifted nearly all of its resources to track claims of civilian casualties from coalition airstrikes, which are now reported to kill more civilians each month than those carried out by Russia.

The U.S. military said Tuesday that it had added five full-time members to its team monitoring civilian casualty claims, which to date included only two full-time and two part-time personnel. Army Col. Ryan Dillon told reporters in Baghdad that aviation, intelligence and legal experts were added to help boost the team’s response time on civilian casualty reports.