Alwaght- At least 14 civilians were killed in Syria's Raqqa on Monday when the US-led coalition carried out airstrikes on the city’s al-Naim region.
According to Syria's official news agency, SANA, the US fighter jets raids, allegedly targeting ISIS positions, also resulted in severe damage to civilians and the city’s infrastructure.
On 24 August, UN warned that half of the estimated 20,000 people living in Syria’s ISIS-held city of Raqqa are children, as the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), predominantly Kurdish militias, supported by Washington-led coalitions' airstrikes battle for the northern city's central districts.
Fran Equiza, an official with the UN children’s agency said “There are 10,000 children trapped in Raqqa in extremely dire conditions. No electricity, no water, probably very little food ... and the battle almost every day.”
Earlier in the month, the US-led coalition acknowledged that it had killed almost 700 civilians since it commenced its aerial bombardment campaign three years ago.
Aerial view of destruction in Raqqa. (by Raqqa is Being Slaughtered Silently 08-30-17)
The coalition has been conducting airstrikes against what are said to be ISIS targets inside Syria since September 2014 without any authorization from the Damascus government or a UN mandate.
The military alliance has repeatedly been accused of targeting and killing civilians. It has also been largely incapable of fulfilling its declared aim of destroying ISIS.
On June 6, the US-backed SDF militiamen said they had launched an operation aimed at pushing ISIS out of Raqqa.
The Syrian government has also on multiple occasions sent letters to UN Secretary General António Guterres and the UN Security Council stressing that US-led coalition was perpetrating war crimes and crimes against humanity through aerial bombardment of residential neighborhoods.
