Panic Spreads in Iraq, Syria as Record Numbers of Civilians Are Reported Killed in US Strikes

“People used to feel safe when the American planes were in the sky, because they knew they didn’t hit civilians,” said Hussam Essa, a founder of Raqqa is Being Slaughtered Silently, which monitors violence in Raqqa province. “They were only afraid of the Russian and regime planes. But now they are very afraid of the American airstrikes.”

American planes are “targeting everywhere,” he said.

According to the UK-based organization Airwars, which tracks allegations of civilian deaths in airstrikes, out of 1,257 claims of deaths in US-led coalition airstrikes this month, a record 337 have been assessed as being “fair,” meaning that there is a reasonable level of public reporting of the alleged incident from two or more generally credible sources and that strikes have been confirmed in the vicinity on the day in question.

“The scale of the destruction is huge, and we are reeling from the number of alleged cases, not just in Mosul but in Raqqa, too,” said Chris Woods, the director of Airwars. “Casualty numbers from western Mosul are absolutely shocking. In Syria it’s a car here, a family there. It happens every day.”

The group has stopped monitoring Russian strikes in Syria, in order to focus on accusations linked to the US-led coalition, saying its organization is overwhelmed. In the first two months of the year, US strikes were responsible for more civilian casualties than Russian strikes for the first time since Russia intervened in Syria’s civil war in 2015, according to Airwars figures. Russian strikes are now climbing again as a partial cease-fire collapses.

Woods said the intensification began during the Obama administration but escalated under Trump. In December, the US-led coalition delegated approval to battlefield commanders in Mosul, speeding up the responsiveness of strikes after a tough battle for the eastern part of the city. The coalition says strikes are subject to the same scrutiny.

“The death of innocent civilians in war is a terrible tragedy that weighs heavily on all of us,” said Col. Joseph Scrocca, a spokesman for the US military in Baghdad, adding that the United States works within the laws of armed conflict. “We set the highest standards for protecting civilians and our dedication, diligence and discipline in prosecuting our combat operations, while protecting civilians, is without precedence in the history of warfare.”

The escalation of US strikes around the city of Raqqa ramped up in February as the United States intensified efforts to train and equip a Syrian force in preparation for an offensive against the city, expected to begin in the coming months.

In March, the tempo increased further, with more sites being targeted that have no obvious military value, according to a Syrian living in Turkey who is from Raqqa and is in regular contact with his family and friends who are still there. “They are hitting everything that isn’t a small house,” including the barges that ferry passengers across the river dividing the city now that the bridges have been disabled, he said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of concern for his family.

Among the bigger incidents was a strike last week on a school sheltering displaced people in the town of Mansoura outside Raqqa that killed at least 30 people, according to monitoring groups. An attack on a mosque in western Aleppo that the US military said was aimed at known al-Qaeda operatives also appears to have killed dozens of people attending prayers, according to witness accounts and monitoring groups.

Townsend said the initial indications were that the school strike was “clean” and did not kill civilians.

A wave of continued attacks in the past week in the small town of Tabqa has added to a record toll of 101 civilians killed by US strikes from the beginning of the month to March 21, Essa said. He provided the names of 41 people alleged to have been killed in a three-day period last week in strikes that hit a bakery, a carwash, a slaughterhouse and other targets.

In Iraq and Syria, residents and activists say there has also been a discernible shift in the kinds of targets being hit — with infrastructure such as hospitals and schools coming under fire. The US-led coalition contends that militants are increasingly using such protected buildings as bases for attack, knowing that there are restrictions on bombing them under US rules of engagement.

Tabqa is a crucial step on the path to Raqqa, and it is the current focus of the battle. Reports that the Tabqa dam have also been hit by airstrikes during the fighting have further contributed to the sense of panic after the Islamic State issued a warning on Sunday that the dam could burst.

Townsend said the United States had not been targeting the Tabqa dam and had been using “non-cratering” munitions in that area to protect the site.

Downstream from the dam, residents are terrified by the intensified bombing and of the risk of a dam breach, the Syrian said. His family is desperate to escape, but the Islamic State has erected checkpoints to prevent people from fleeing. “People don’t know what to do,” he said.

In Iraq, too, civilians are trapped as Iraqi forces push into the most densely packed areas of Mosul, including the Old City, where an estimated 400,000 people are trapped in old structures on narrow streets.

The United Nations said that at least 307 civilians have been killed and 273 wounded in western Mosul since Feb. 17, warning Iraqi security forces and the coalition to avoid falling into the Islamic State’s “trap” as the group deliberately puts civilians in danger.

With a large amount of artillery and ordnance being fired into the city, though, it is hard to ascertain which deaths the coalition is responsible for, Woods said. Iraqi commanders, who call in airstrikes from the US-led coalition, say its difficult for them to know whether civilians are in houses when many are stuck inside for weeks at a time and it is not possible to see them through drone surveillance.

Lt. Gen. Abdul Ghani al-Asadi, commander of Iraq’s counterterrorism units, said the troops are instead relying on tips from those fleeing as to which houses have civilians inside.

Still, Mosul Eye, a monitoring group in the city, said it had warned Iraqi forces that civilians were trapped in homes in Mosul al-Jadida days before the US strike there and sent coordinates.

Amnesty International said that because the government has told residents to stay in their homes, the US-led coalition should have known that strikes would be likely to result in significant numbers of civilian casualties.

For civilians, many of whom are trapped, the situation is dire.

Nour Mohammed’s family of 23 people hid in a basement in western Mosul for nearly two weeks as explosions rang out around them.

Islamic State militants forced the family to keep the front door open so that they could move in and out of the building freely and fend off the advancing Iraqi forces from the roof.

“We were terrified every time we’d hear the sound of an airplane that they’d bomb us all,” she said as she fled the city last week.