Alwaght- The United Nations Commission of Inquiry on Syria says US-led coalition killed at least 150 civilians in the airstrikes on a school in the northern Syrian city of Raqqa in March 2017.
In its latest report covering six months through January 15, the UN commission said on Tuesday the death toll is roughly five times higher than the figures acknowledged by the Pentagon, which claimed at the time that dozens of militants and no civilians were killed.
The report noted that, even before the campaign to take Raqqa city began, the US-led coalition failed to take all feasible precautions to protect civilians and civilian objects, in violation of international humanitarian law, when it launched an airstrike in al-Mansoura which killed at least 150 internally displaced persons, including women and children. Trapped in an effectively besieged city, residents of Raqqa were later used by ISIS terrorist group as human shields, as were others in Deir ez-Zor, the report noted.
We found that “the US forces had enough time and resources available, that they should have been able to take additional precautions that may have led to the air strike being called off or delayed,” Paulo Pinheiro, chairman of the UN Commission of Inquiry on Syria, said.
The US has been conducting airstrikes against what it says are ISIS without Syrian government or a United Nations mandate.
