Syria: Bodies of More Victims of ISIL, US Attacks Found in Raqqa

Media activists in Raqqa reported that the corpses of 9 civilians, including a child, 2 women and an elderly, have been found from under the debris of ruined buildings in al-Tose’eiyah neighborhood destroyed in the US raids over the past year.

They further said that bodies of 2 more victims were found from the debris of a building in al-Haramiyah neighborhood in Raqqa city.

Bodies of a sum of 10 ISIL victims have also been found in a mass grave in Panorama district in the Western part of Raqqa city.

A year after the US and its allies earned control over the Raqqa city, the dead bodies of Syrian civilians are still retrieved from mass graves and debris in Raqqa province.

Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said last month that the bodies of over 8,000 Syrians killed in the bombing raids carried out by the US and the coalition led by it had been found in mass graves in Syria’s Raqqa after the rubble was partially cleared away.

“Last week, the Syrian government, in its letters addressed to the UN secretary general and the UN Security Council president, provided the tragic statistics on the victims of the coalition’s bombing raids in the city of Raqqa during its ‘liberation’ from ISIL (known as ISIS or Daesh),” she noted.

“The bodies of over 4,000 people were found while clearing away the rubble in two of the city’s residential neighborhoods left over from the airstrikes and also around the stadium and the zoo. Those were mainly women, the elderly and children. In addition, a mass grave where more than 2,500 people were buried was uncovered at a farm near a pediatric clinic and the National Hospital, while another burial site was opened near Al-Panorama where 1,500 bombing raids’ victims were buried,” Zakharova added.

“The letters stressed that to date just two percent of the rubble had been cleared away in Raqqa, which had been literally razed to the ground,” Zakharova emphasized.

According to the diplomat, the statistics turned out to be in stark contrast with “the hysterical reaction expressed by the US and other Western countries with respect to protecting Syrians’ rights”, and “the information provided in recent reports by various Western NGOs on the situation in Raqqa”.