On June 6, the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) launched the Wrath of Euphrates operation to capture Raqqa, the de facto capital of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as ISIS). More than 50 days later, the SDF said they controlled 45 percent of the city.
The operation has been accompanied by an intensification of the aerial bombardment over Raqqa, which in mid-June led Paulo Pinheiro, the chairman of the United Nations Commission of Inquiry on Syria, to say that the operation had resulted in a "staggering loss of civilian life". Between January and early June, the US-led coalition carried out some 1,300 strikes on Raqqa. Since the start of Wrath of Euphrates, it has carried out another 1,215 - more than half of the total coalition air strikes on Iraq and Syria for that period.
According to the Syrian Network for Human Rights, around 400 civilians have died since the operation was launched. After hundreds of thousands of people fled, fewer than 20 percent of Raqqa's residents remain trapped in the city, the UN estimates.
