Russia: US-led coalition wiped Raqqa ‘off the face of the earth’ with bombing campaign

The Russian Defense Ministry on Sunday slammed the U.S.-led coalition in Syria for its actions in Raqqa.

A spokesman for the Defense Ministry said in a statement only 45,000 people are left in Raqqa, out of the 200,000 that previously lived there, Reuters reported.

“Raqqa has inherited the fate of Dresden in 1945, wiped off the face of the earth by Anglo-American bombardments,” Maj. Gen. Igor Konashenkov said.

{mosads}Konashenkov questioned what was behind the “rush” by Western capitals to “provide targeted financial help only to Raqqa,” according to the news service.

“There’s only one explanation — the desire to cover up evidence of the barbaric bombardments by the U.S. air force and the coalition as fast as possible and to bury the thousands of civilians ‘liberated’ from Islamic State in the ruins,” he said.

The comments come after U.S.-backed Syrian forces on Friday declared “total liberation” of Raqqa, the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria’s (ISIS) self-declared capital since 2014.

Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) spokesman Talal Silo called the liberation a “historic victory” over ISIS. Silo said at a ceremony to celebrate the city’s recapture that ISIS suffered a “brutal” defeat.

The SDF, a U.S.-backed mix of Kurdish and Arab fighters, has spent the last four months taking back the city block by block.

Trump said Saturday that U.S.-backed forces had liberated “the entire” city of Raqqa. He hailed it as a “critical breakthrough” of the international campaign to defeat ISIS.