Beirut: Air strikes by a US-led coalition have caused a "staggering" loss of civilian life in recent months around the Islamic State group's Syrian stronghold of Raqqa, a United Nations investigative body said Wednesday.
A US-backed ground force entered the city with the help of coalition air raids last week, three years after the area became a hub from which IS leaders planned expansion throughout the region and attacks around the world.
![An image distributed by IS's propaganda agency Amaq shows a mosque damaged by bombardment by the US-led coalition.](http://web.archive.org./web/20170618185541im_/https://www.fairfaxstatic.com.au/content/dam/images/g/w/r/q/7/f/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.gwrmjp.png/1497536212736.jpg)
Paulo Sergio Pinheiro, chairman of the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Syria, said Wednesday that coalition air strikes have deepened the suffering in the city held by extremist fighters.
"We note in particular that the intensification of air strikes, which have paved the ground for an SDF advance in Raqqa, has resulted not only in staggering loss of civilian life, but has also led to 160,000 civilians fleeing their homes and becoming internally displaced," Pinheiro told the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva. He referred to the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), a US-backed militia dominated by Syrian Kurds.
![The Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces said on Sunday it captured the Raqqa neighbourhood of Romaniah after two days ...](http://web.archive.org./web/20170618185541im_/https://www.fairfaxstatic.com.au/content/dam/images/g/w/r/q/7/m/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.gwrmjp.png/1497536212736.jpg)
The commission recorded 300 civilian deaths from coalition air strikes in Raqqa province between March 1 and May 31, according to Karen AbuZayd, an investigator for the Commission of Inquiry on Syria.
Human rights and monitoring groups have warned for months of the rising human cost of the coalition's air war in Syria and Iraq as IS forces stake out positions in densely populated civilian areas across what remains of the group's self-proclaimed caliphate.
On March 22, the UN commission recorded 200 civilian deaths at an old school building in the village of Mansoura that was sheltering displaced families from across the province.
"These figures have been corroborated by multiple witnesses," AbuZayd said.
![Russian Colonel Generals Sergei Surovikin and Sergei Rudskoi attend a briefing in the Russian Defence Ministry in Moscow ...](http://web.archive.org./web/20170618185541im_/https://www.fairfaxstatic.com.au/content/dam/images/g/w/r/q/7/x/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.gwrmjp.png/1497536212736.jpg)
The US military said at the time that it was aware of the reports and was opening an investigation.
The activist group Raqqa is Being Slaughtered Silently, which monitors violence in the province, provided The Washington Post with the names of 40 people who it said were killed at the school in Mansoura.
A representative from the group said the bodies of dozens more people without identification cards were believed to have been buried in mass graves.
The UN refugee agency made a public plea this week for better access to the province, where tens of thousands of civilians need assistance amid the fighting.
The coalition includes military personnel from dozens of countries, among them Britain, France and Australia. According to its latest report, at least 484 civilians have been unintentionally killed by coalition air strikes since June 2014.
But the Britain-based tracking group Airwars puts that figure eight times higher, claiming that more than 3800 people were killed in that period.
Although the non-profit group previously tracked casualties from both US-led and Russian strikes, it said it now is concentrating resources on claims relating to the US-led coalition to keep up with their pace.
Fatalities from coalition bombing raids now outstrip those caused by Moscow's warplanes, according to Airwars.
The US military said on Tuesday that it has added five full-time members to a team that monitors civilian casualty claims. The team previously consisted of two full-time and two part-time personnel.
Army Colonel Ryan Dillon said that aviation, intelligence and legal experts were added to help boost the team's response time on civilian casualty reports.
Success in purging Raqqa of the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL, would free thousands of civilians from the group's rule, Pinheiro said, including women from Iraq's Yazidi minority who have been held as sex slaves for almost three years. But he warned that the fight must not be undertaken at the "expense of civilians who unwittingly find themselves living in areas" where the group is present.
The number of civilians killed in coalition attacks has raised questions among human rights organisations over whether the greater autonomy the Trump administration has allowed military commanders on the battlefield has diverted attention from protection of civilians.
Those concerns were further underscored by reports last week that coalition forces attacking IS positions around Raqqa had used munitions containing white phosphorus, a weapon banned in populated areas under international law. US officials said the weapons were not being used against people.
Washington Post, New York Times
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