Washington, SANA_ The US Department of Defense (The Pentagon) admitted that the U.S.-led coalition has committed crimes of killing civilians in Syria and Iraq.
Washington newspaper quoted U.S. Army Col. Thomas Veale, a spokesman for the U.S.-led coalition as saying that despite the U.S. military’s best efforts to assess civilian casualties, no one will ever know exactly how many civilians U.S. strikes have killed since the beginning of the coalition operations in the two countries in 2014.
On Tuesday, Amnesty International said that the US-led coalition attacks on Raqqa city last year under the pretext of combating terrorism amount to war crimes.
According to Amnesty International report, the US-led coalition attacks on Raqqa broke international law.
“The US did not take sufficient account of civilians or take the precautions measures to minimize casualties while attacking Raqqa in 2017,” the report included, calling on the coalition to admit the scale of damage, pave the way for a public independent investigation and make reparations to victims of their actions.
“As far as how do we know how many civilians were killed, I am just being honest, no one will ever know,” Veale said. “Anyone who claims they will know is lying, and there’s no possible way.”
Since it was illegally formed in 2014 under the pretext of combating terrorism, The U.S.-led coalition has been conducting airstrikes against what it claims are Daesh targets without any authorization from the Syrian government or a United Nations mandate and committing dozens of massacres in Raqqa and the villages of Deir Ezzor and Hasaka.
The coalition’s massacres have resulted in the death and wounding of hundreds of civilians, the targeting of bridges and vital facilities in the villages and the displacement of hundreds of thousands of its inhabitants.
Ghossoun/