‘They bombed trapped civilians’: Amnesty’s damning report on UK, US, France destruction in Raqqa

UK, US, and French bombs inflicted mass loss of civilian life in ISIS-held Raqqa, according Amnesty International. A new report has also accused coalition forces of bombing areas where they knew civilians were trapped.

During the four-month operation to eradicate the Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS) in the Syrian city of Raqqa, the US-led coalition – which includes British forces – killed hundreds of civilians and injured many more, says Amnesty International.

According to its damning report into the coalition forces, residents were trapped as fighting raged in the streets between IS militants and the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), who were supported by coalition airstrikes. Escape routes for civilians were riddled with IEDs, put there by Islamic State, which also positioned snipers to shoot those trying to flee.

The Hashish family lost 18 members, mostly women and children, over a two-week period in August. A coalition airstrike killed nine, while seven died as they tried to flee via a road that was laid with IS mines, and two others were killed by a mortar launched by the SDF.

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“Those who stayed, died; and those who tried to run away, died,”said Munira Hashish. “We couldn’t afford to pay the smugglers; we were trapped.” Hashish said that she and her children eventually managed to escape through a minefield “by walking over the blood of those who were blown up as they tried to flee ahead of us.”

Senior Crisis Response Adviser at Amnesty International Donatella Rovera is calling on the coalition forces to launch an investigation into the bombing campaign that left Raqqa devastated.

“When so many civilians are killed in attack after attack, something is clearly wrong, and to make this tragedy worse, so many months later the incidents have not been investigated,” she said. “The victims deserve justice.

“The coalition’s claims that its precision air campaign allowed it to bomb IS out of Raqqa while causing very few civilian casualties do not stand up to scrutiny. On the ground in Raqqa, we witnessed a level of destruction comparable to anything we’ve seen in decades of covering the impact of wars,” she continued.

“IS’s brutal four-year rule in Raqqa was rife with war crimes. But the violations of IS, including the use of civilians as human shields, do not relieve the coalition of their obligations to take all feasible precautions to minimize harm to civilians.

“What levelled the city and killed and injured so many civilians was the US-led coalition’s repeated use of explosive weapons in populated areas where they knew civilians were trapped. Even precision weapons are only as precise as their choice of targets.”

Rovera added that the level of devastation and destruction in Raqqa is worse than anything they have seen in decades, quoting a senior US military officer as saying that “more artillery shells were launched into Raqqa than anywhere since the end of the Vietnam war.”

The Amnesty International report, based on 112 interviews and visits to 42 strike locations, has already been slammed by a coalition spokesman – even before it was published.

US forces fired 100 percent of the artillery rounds used against Raqqa and over 90 percent of airstrikes. British and French aircraft were also involved, with the UK’s Ministry of Defense admitting that Britain carried out 275 airstrikes. The UK claims that no civilians were killed as a result of their bombs.

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The human rights group claim that there is strong evidence that coalition air and artillery strikes killed and injured thousands of civilians, including in disproportionate or indiscriminate attacks that violated international humanitarian law. Despite pledges that civilian loss of life would be thoroughly investigated by coalition forces, Amnesty says there is no sign of this happening.

Middle East Researcher at Amnesty International Benjamin Walsby has questioned why the coalition felt the need to bomb the city in ruins if “the coalition and their SDF allies were ultimately going to grant IS fighters safe passage and impunity.”He added: “What possible military advantage was there in destroying practically an entire city and killing so many civilians?

“Raqqa’s civilians are returning home to ruins, pulling loved ones out of rubble, and facing death or injury from mines, IEDs and unexploded ordnance,” Walsby said. “The coalition’s refusal to acknowledge its role in creating this catastrophic situation adds insult to injury.”

An MoD spokesman said: “Keeping Britain safe from the threat of terrorism is the objective of this campaign and throughout we have been open and transparent, detailing each of our nearly 1,700 strikes, facilitating operational briefings and confirming when a civilian casualty had taken place.

“We do everything we can to minimize the risk to civilian life through our rigorous targeting processes and the professionalism of the RAF crews but, given the ruthless and inhuman behavior of Daesh, and the congested, complex urban environment in which we operate, we must accept that the risk of inadvertent civilian casualties is ever present.”

US Army Colonel Sean Ryan has denied accusations made by Amnesty International of disproportionate bombing and unlawful killing.

“I think we served the people of Raqqa to the best of our ability and against an enemy that has used tactics that no one even suspected they would use,” Ryan said. “We’re the ones who liberated Raqqa and did it come at a price? Sure – but it's a time of war, and that's what happens sometimes. We go to extreme levels to avoid innocent civilians.”


(RT)

A new analysis of global hurricane data since 1980 shows the number of storms with winds over 124 mph has doubled, and those with winds over 155 mph has tripled. As the 2018 Atlantic hurricane season begins, scientists are worried that U.S. coastal communities could face more super storms with winds, storm surges and rainfall so intense that current warning categories don’t fully capture the threat. Therefore, scientists call for expanding the hurricane scale for better warnings that could save lives.

This year’s forecast is about average and much more subdued than last summer’s hyperactive season turned out to be, partly due to cooler ocean temperatures in the tropical Atlantic, as well as a nascent El Niño pattern. But that doesn’t mean an individual storm won’t blow up to exceptional strength, as Andrew did before striking Florida in 1992, an otherwise relatively quiet year.

Heat trapped by the increasing concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere is raising the chances of that happening, said Penn State climate scientist Michael Mann.

A new review of global data on hurricanes shows that since 1980, the number of storms with winds stronger than 200 kilometers per hour (124 mph, or a strong Category 3) have doubled, and those with winds stronger than 250 kilometers per hour (155 mph) have tripled.

The analysis, published this week by four prominent climate scientists, also shows other clear trends, including a poleward migration of the areas where storms reach peak intensity, which puts new areas at risk, including New England and even Europe.

Storms are also intensifying more quickly, with a greater chance they will drop record amounts of rain, especially if they stall out when they hit land, as Hurricane Harvey did in Houston last year.

“The weight of the evidence suggests that the 30-year-old prediction of more intense and wetter tropical cyclones is coming to pass. This is a risk that we can no longer afford to ignore,” wrote the authors—Stefan Rahmstorf of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, Kerry Emanuel of MIT, Jim Kossin of NOAA and Mann.

“The current intensity scale doesn’t capture the fact that a 10 mph increase in sustained wind speeds ups the damage potential by 20 percent,” Mann said. “That’s not a subtle effect. It’s one that we can see.” Based on the spacing of Categories 1-5,there should be a Category 6 approaching peak winds of 190 mph, he said.

Creating a new warning level for unprecedented storms could help save lives.When Typhoon Haiyan, one of the strongest tropical cyclones on record, hit the Philippines in 2013, people died in shelters that had been designed to withstand a historic storm surge but still flooded.

2018 Atlantic Forecast and Role of Ocean Temps

This year’s Atlantic storm season didn’t wait for the official June 1 start date: Alberto became one of very few tropical or subtropical cyclones to enter the Gulf of Mexico in the month of May. The storm reached peak intensity with 65 mph winds on May 28, passing through offshore oil and gas drilling areas and forcing some coastal evacuations. It maintained subtropical circulation features all the way north to Indiana.

Colorado State University, which also issues a key hurricane outlook, revised its expectations downward slightly this week. The forecasters said they now expect an average hurricane season, with 14 named storms (including Alberto), six hurricanes and two major hurricanes, with a 51 percent chance of a major hurricane making landfall somewhere in the U.S.

The CSU forecasters said their revision was partly based on cooler-than-normal ocean temperatures off the western African coast. That means there is less heat available to fuel hurricane formation in a region that spawns some of the strongest storms, including Maria and Irma in 2017, which became the two costliest Caribbean hurricanes on record.

Last year, April sea surface temperatures in the eastern tropical Atlantic, a main hurricane formation area, were about 1-4 degrees Fahrenheit above average, helping to fuel the seemingly endless chain of tropical systems spinning toward the Caribbean and East Coast.

This year, sea surface temperatures in a large part of that formation area are about 1 degree Fahrenheit cooler than average, part of a short-term cyclical ocean change driven by currents and winds.

Long-term, sea surface temperatures in this region have warmed about 0.5 to 1 degree Celsius in the past 100 years. According to a 2008 study published in the journal Nature, warming oceans were responsible for approximately 40 percent of the increase in hurricane activity between 1996 and 2005, a particularly active hurricane period.

While this year’s lowered forecast might sound like good news, the CSU hurricane forecasters reminded coastal residents that “it only takes one hurricane making landfall to make it an active season.”

Big Concern: Preparing for More Intense Storms

When it comes to hurricanes, most of the overwhelming damage, including loss of life, is from the “very few strongest storms,” Mann said. “What matters is how many Category 3, 4, and 5 storms we get, and we’re likely to see more of those storms, and more damage and loss of life as a result.“

What happened in Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria is one example. The storm resulted in the greatest estimated loss of life on record from any storm in the U.S., with estimates of over 4,600 deaths, many from lack of access to medical care in the weeks and months after the storm, according to a new study published in the New England Journal of Medicine.

“That’s not a coincidence,” said Mann. “We have to recognize that by some measures, dangerous climate change isn’t some far-off thing we can look to avoid. It has arrived.”

“There are bad recovery decisions being made,” Grannis said, using the impacts of Hurricane Irene in Vermont as an example.

Flooding from the 2011 storm destroyed big sections of the state’s road system by washing out old culverts designed for a climate that no longer exists. Recovery included plans for replacing the old drainage systems with new “bottomless” culverts that can handle much more water, but the Federal Emergency Management Agency “denied them the cost of those culverts,” she said. “Disaster recovery programs push people into replacing old systems with the same thing.”

During the Obama administration, the federal government had started shifting policies to consider climate risks, but now we are “back in scenario of putting in things we know won’t be adequate,” she said.

“The damages that occurred last year strongly suggest that small investments in resilience in the past 10 years could well have saved hundreds of billions of dollars and lots of strife,” he said. “After Hurricane Katrina, the Corp of Engineers built back the levees to withstand a Category 3 hurricane, but not a Category 5 hurricane. That makes no sense to me, and in many areas the U.S. seems incapable of planning ahead for real risks.”

Whether climate change or weather engineering, Hurricane Season 2018 is anomalous. It started with Alberto, one of very few tropical or subtropical cyclones to enter the Gulf of Mexico in the month of May. And as stated above, super storms are becoming stronger and more common. So just be prepared!

(strangesounds.org)