Fresh US-led airstrikes leave 18 Syrian civilians dead in Raqqah

More than a dozen civilians have been killed after the US-led coalition purportedly fighting the Daesh Takfiri terrorist group carried out a series of aerial assaults in Syria’s militant-held northern city of Raqqah.

The so-called Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported that eight people were killed on Tuesday, when US-led warplanes pounded Hadiqa al-Baydha neighborhood in the city, located about 455 kilometers (283 miles) northeast of the capital Damascus.

The development came only a day after 10 civilians, including six men and four women, lost their lives in US-led aerial attacks against residential neighborhoods of Raqqah.

The Observatory said the victims were all members of an internally displaced family from the ancient city of Palmyra.

The Britain-based monitoring group noted that Monday’s fatalities took to 816 the number of civilians, who have lost their lives in US-led airstrikes against Raqqah between June 5 and August 28. The figure included 204 children and 131 women.

The Syrian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Expatriates, in two separate letters sent to UN Secretary General António Guterres and rotating President of the UN Security Council Amr Abdellatif Aboulatta on August 24, stated that the US-led coalition was perpetrating war crimes and crimes against humanity through aerial bombardment of residential neighborhoods.

The Syrian Foreign Ministry also stressed that the military alliance was using internationally-banned white phosphorus munitions in flagrant violation of international law and the Charter of the United Nations.

The US-led coalition has been conducting airstrikes against what are said to be Daesh 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 Daesh.

The city of Raqqah, which lies on the northern bank of the Euphrates River, was overrun by Daesh terrorists in March 2013, and was proclaimed the center for most of the Takfiris’ administrative and control tasks the following year. 

It is estimated that some 300,000 civilians are trapped inside Raqqah, including 80,000 displaced from other parts of Syria. Thousands have fled in recent months, and the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs believes about 160,000 people remain in the city.

On June 6, the US-backed militiamen from the so-called Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) said they had launched an operation aimed at pushing Daesh out of Raqqah.

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