Bodies of 800 More Victims of ISIL, US Attacks Found in Raqqa

The media activists disclosed on Monday that the new mass grave has been discovered in the village of al-Fakhikheh South of the city of Raqqa.

They underlined that between 600 to 800 corpses have been retrieved from the mass grave, and said that the newly-discovered mass grave was the 14th of its kind found in Raqqa City and its outskirts.

This is while Raqqa’s civilian team also discovered more bodies of civilians, who were killed in the US-led coalition’s airstrikes on Raqqa City, from under the debris of the destroyed buildings in districts of al-Tosayeh, Nazleh Shahadeh and al-Haramieh in 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 late last year that the bodies of over 8,000 Syrians killed in the bombing raids carried out by the US and the coalition led by the US 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”.