Amnesty to expand probe of US-led campaign in Syria's Raqqa

Amnesty International said Wednesday it is enlisting the help of thousands of online activists to speed up its investigation into the US-led campaign that drove Islamic State militants from their self-styled capital of Raqqa but left the Syrian city in ruins.

The London-based rights group said the new phase of its investigation enables thousands of online activists, using satellite imagery of the city, to map out the destruction over the four-month campaign, which ended in October 2017.

The UN estimates that more than 10,000 buildings were destroyed or 80 per cent of the city.

Amnesty's Strike Tracker campaign, in partnership with Airwars, would help narrow down when and where coalition air and artillery strikes destroyed buildings.

Amnesty hopes to compel the US-led coalition to accept greater responsibility for the destruction and conduct its own investigation into the deaths of hundreds of civilians.

The coalition says it worked to avoid civilian casualties in Raqqa. Col. Sean Ryan, a spokesman for the coalition, said it is "always willing to review if new evidence is reported."
"There is a mountain of evidence left to sift through, and the scale of the civilian devastation is simply too large for us to do this alone."