The US-backed assault to drive Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) from its Syrian capital Raqqa in 2017 killed more than 1,600 civilians, a figure 10 times the toll the coalition has acknowledged, according to a new report. 

The investigation, published by Amnesty International and the monitoring group Airwars on Thursday, urged top coalition members to “end almost two years of denial about the massive civilian death toll and destruction it unleashed in Raqqa”. 

Donatella Rovera, senior crisis response adviser at Amnesty, said “many of the air bombardments were inaccurate and tens of thousands of artillery strikes were indiscriminate”.

“Coalition forces razed Raqqa, but they cannot erase the truth,” she said. 

The findings were compiled after months of field research and extensive data analysis, including via a project that saw 3,000 digital activists scan satellite imagery online.

Amnesty and Airwars said the cases they had documented probably amounted to violations of international humanitarian law.

They also urged coalition members, especially the United States, Britain and France,  to put in place an independent investigation mechanism and create a fund to compensate victims and their families.

Responding to the report, the coalition said it takes “all reasonable measures to minimise civilian casualties” and that there were still open allegations it was investigating.

“Any unintentional loss of life during the defeat of Daesh is tragic,” said Scott Rawlinson, a coalition spokesman in an emailed statement later on Thursday, using an Arabic acronym for ISIL

“However it must be balanced against the risk of enabling Daesh to continue terrorist activities, causing pain and suffering to anyone they choose,” he added.

ISIL seized Raqqa in early 2014 during its advance through Syria and Iraq in which it built a self-proclaimed caliphate characterised by summary executions.

Its mass killing and enslavement of minorities was described as genocide by the United Nations.

The group has since been driven from all the territory it controlled by military campaigns waged by an array of forces including the Syrian and Iraqi governments, US, its European allies and their rivals Russia and Iran.

ISIL was defeated by US-backed fighters in its last Syrian stronghold this year. Despite no longer controlling territory, it is still seen as a threat to launch attacks around the world.

Amnesty said last year that there was evidence coalition air and artillery strikes in Raqqa had broken international law by endangering the lives of civilians, but until now had not given an estimate of the death toll during the battle.

The London-based rights group also criticised the extensive use of artillery in the battle of Raqqa, which one US military official boasted was the US’s highest since the Vietnam war. 

“With a margin of error of more than 100 metres, unguided artillery is notoriously imprecise and its use in populated areas constitutes indiscriminate attacks,” it said.

The Kremlin tried hard to present Kim Jong Un‘s first ever visit to Russia as an historic event aimed at proving how important Moscow is in the denuclearisation of the Korean Peninsula – especially after the failure of US-North Korean talks in Hanoi two months ago.

Kremlin-controlled media described in great detail how Kim’s armoured train arrived in the Pacific port of Vladivostok on Wednesday, how Russian officials welcomed him with traditional round bread and salt, what theatres, museums and landmarks the moonfaced autocrat will visit during his three-day visit.

“We are very much willing to take the Korean-Russian ties to a new, higher level,” Kim said during a reception after talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin that lasted for more than three hours on Thursday.

“Everyone is happy with the outcome of the talks,” Putin added – and toasted to “strengthening the friendship and cooperation” between Moscow and Pyongyang.

‘Mutual interests’

Kim highlighted the importance of the relationship and said ties have strengthened, while both nations had overcome “every hardship thrown to them by history”.

“The people of the two countries … understand [that the] North Korea-Russia tie not only serves our mutual interests but is also indispensable for securing the region’s peace and stability,” Kim said. 

But the summit’s presumed importance seemed to fizzle out as it did not produce a deal of any significance for the Korean settlement, and no accords were signed after the talks.

Experts say, however, that the true purpose of Kim’s visit to Russia was a chance to leave himself some wiggle room when talks with the US resume – and to use Russia as the bogeyman if US President Donald Trump goes too far with his threats.

“This is the breakthrough the [North] Korean side needed to tell the US: ‘Look, we have normal ties with Moscow, if something happens, we will run to them for protection, stop waving your fists,’” Dmitry Zhuravlev, director general of the Institute of Regional Issues, a Moscow think-tank, told Al Jazeera.

China is North Korea’s main international backer, but Russia has plenty of leverage and interest in propping up Kim’s dynasty. If it weren’t for the Soviet Union, North Korea would not exist – Communist Moscow supplied its tiny vassal with foodstuffs, fuel and diplomatic protection for decades.

Moscow still has veto power in the United Nations Security Council, and it wants to play a role in anything related to North Korea. The nations share a border, and Russia serves as a workplace for at least 10,000 North Korean labour migrants, an important source of hard currency for Pyongyang.

Russia does not want a nuclear disaster next door, but its interest in the disarmament of North Korea is limited; the fall of the Kim dynasty would likely mean that a unified Korea becomes a US ally, and American military bases could appear next to Russia’s Pacific provinces.

As a result of Thursday’s summit, Putin and Kim “reached an agreement that Russia will definitely be one of the international guarantors of any accord between North Korea and the United States,” Andrey Fyodorov, Russia’s former deputy foreign minister and an expert on North Korea, told Al Jazeera.

Russia will also help shape a list of conditions for North Korea’s disarmament.

US demands don’t ‘suit Kim’ 

In February, Kim’s talks with US President Donald Trump collapsed because they could not reach an agreement on White House’s demands for Pyongyang to denuclearize and for Washington to drop sanctions.

US demands “don’t suit Kim fully, they are too broad, they involve all walks of life, such as a ban on space research, chemical research and what not,” Fyodorov said.

“That is why the main task of Russia, the US and China is to come up with a real formulation of denuclearisation.”

Putin said he would discuss a possible disarmament deal in China, where he is flying later on Thursday.

“I will, of course, talk tomorrow in Beijing with the leaders of China, but we will openly and frankly discuss today’s meeting with the US leaders,” Putin told journalists after the summit.

Moscow’s role in talks over North Korea’s nuclear programme is one of the few remaining points of contact with Washington as Russia’s ties with the West plunged to Cold War-era lows because of the annexation of Crimea and support to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

“Without us, without Russia, one can’t untie the Gordian knot of the Korean problems,” Zhuravlev said.

Kim said that he may board his custom-made train to traverse Siberia for talks later this year the way his father, Kim Jong Il, who was born in a Russian village not far from the Chinese border in 1941, visited Russia several times.

“The people of North Korea have always had affectionate and brotherly emotions about the people of Russia and feel pride that a great country like Russia is a close neighbour,” Kim said after the talks.

Former United States Vice President Joe Biden joined a crowded 2020 Democratic presidential field on Thursday, officially announcing his candidacy in a video posted on his Twitter account.

The announcement follows months of speculation over whether Biden, a Democratic party stalwart and an early leader in opinion polls, would launch a bid for his party’s nomination to challenge President Donald Trump in 2020.

Biden served eight years as vice president under President Barack Obama and 36 years in the US Senate. At 76, he is the second oldest candidate in the Democratic nominating contests, after 77-year-old Senator Bernie Sanders.

Biden will likely be a key figure in the Democratic debate over whether a liberal political newcomer or a centrist veteran is needed to win back the White House.

Biden, who relishes his “Middle-Class Joe” nickname and touts his working-class roots, made unsuccessful bids for the nomination in 1988 and 2008.

Challenges

With a record in elected office that stretches half a century, Biden faces multiple challenges.

Last month he struggled to respond to comments from Lucy Flores, a 2014 lieutenant governor nominee in Nevada, who said he made her uncomfortable by touching her shoulders and kissing the back of her head before a campaign event. Several other women have made similar claims.

In a video, Biden pledged to be “more mindful” of respecting “personal space”, but Flores told Fox News this week that the former senator’s jokes on the matter have been “so incredibly disrespectful”. 

The incident is just a glimpse of the harsh vetting from both Democrats and Republicans expected for Biden, who has run for president twice before but never from such a strong political starting point. 

His first White House bid in 1988 ended after a plagiarism scandal. And in recent weeks, he was repeatedly forced to explain his 1991 decision, as Senate Judiciary Committee chairman, to allow Anita Hill to face questions about her allegations of sexual harassment against Clarence Thomas, then a nominee for the Supreme Court. Biden has since apologised for his role in the hearing. 

Some liberal activists have also criticised Biden’s senate record, including his authorship of the 1994 crime act that led to increased incarceration rates, and his ties to the financial industry, which is prominent in his home state of Delaware.

On paper, however, Biden may be well positioned to take on Trump in a general election.

The Republican president’s allies have privately warned that Biden might be the biggest threat to Trump’s reelection given Biden’s potential appeal among the white working class in the Midwest, the same region that helped Trump win the presidency.

Biden joins a field of 19 other candidates who have officially announced their candidacy. 

This includes: Cory Booker, Pete Buttigieg, Julian Castro, John Delaney, Tulsi Gabbard, Kristen Gillibrand, Kamala Harris, John Hickenlooper, Jay Inslee, Amy Klobuchar, Wyne Messam, Seth Moulton, Reto O’Rourke, Tim Ryan, Bernie Sanders, Eric Swalwell, Elizabeth Warren, Marianne Williamson, and Andrew Yang.

Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif does not believe US President Donald Trump wants war with Iran, but he has told Reuters news agency that Trump could be lured into a conflict.

“I don’t think he wants war,” Zarif said in an interview at the Iranian mission to the United Nations in New York on Wednesday. “But that doesn’t exclude him being basically lured into one.”

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Zarif’s remarks.

Zarif said a so-called “B-team”, including Trump’s NSA John Bolton, an ardent Iran hawk, and conservative Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu could goad Trump into conflict with Tehran.

“Those who have designed the policies that are being pursued do not simply want a negotiated solution. But let me make it clear that Iran is not seeking confrontation, but will not escape defending itself,” he said.

In somewhat cryptic remarks, Zarif also warned of the possibility that people could try “to plot an accident” that could trigger a broader crisis.

Tensions between Tehran and Washington have risen since the Trump administration withdrew last year from an international nuclear deal with Iran and began ratcheting up sanctions. Earlier this month, the United States blacklisted Iran’s elite Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and demanded buyers of Iranian oil stop purchases by May or face sanctions.

The US blacklisting of the IRGC, Iran’s most powerful security organisation with huge stakes in the economy, was the first time any nation has labelled another country’s military a “terrorist” organisation.

Zarif said Iran would act with “prudence” in response to what he saw as dangerous policies by the US. In one example, he said Iran would still allow US warships to pass through the Strait of Hormuz, the world’s most important oil artery.

Rules of engagement

Zarif called the decision on the IRGC “absurd” but suggested that Iran did not plan to respond militarily unless the US changed the rules of engagement guiding how it interacts with Iran’s forces. The US military has not suggested it would change its behaviour after the blacklisting.

“We will exercise prudence but it doesn’t mean that if the United States changed the rules of the game, or changed the rules of engagement, it would be able to get away with that,” Zarif said.

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani and some senior military commanders have threatened to disrupt oil shipments from the Gulf countries if Washington tries to strangle Tehran oil exports.

Carrying one-third of the world’s seaborne oil every day, the Strait of Hormuz links Middle East crude producers to markets in the Asia Pacific, Europe, North America and beyond.

Asked if US warships could still pass through the Strait of Hormuz, Zarif – a veteran diplomat who has been foreign minister for more than six years – said: “Ships can go through the Strait of Hormuz.”

“If the United States wanted to continue to observe the rules of engagement, the rules of the game, the channels of communication, the prevailing protocols, then in spite of the fact that we consider US presence in the Persian Gulf as inherently destabilising, we’re not going to take any action,” Zarif said.

The US has accused Tehran of destabilising the Middle East and helping to prop up Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in a civil war that began in 2011.

Iranian Major General Qassem Soleimani, the head of Iran’s elite Quds Force, the overseas arm of the IRGC, appeared on front lines across Syria.

Zarif said Iran would remain “vigilant” in Syria and in Iraq after investing resources to fight there. “And we will not simply abandon that, that fight,” Zarif said.

‘PhD’ in sanctions busting

Zarif, the US-educated architect of the 2015 nuclear deal who came under attack from anti-Western hardliners in Iran after Trump pulled out of the agreement last year, signalled Tehran would be resilient in the face of US sanctions.

“I mean, there are always ways of going around the sanctions. We have a PhD in that area,” Zarif said.

The US on Monday demanded buyers of Iranian oil stop purchases by May or face sanctions, ending six months of waivers which allowed Iran’s eight biggest buyers, most of them in Asia, to continue importing limited volumes.

Zarif acknowledged that oil sanctions hurt ordinary Iranians and the government would do whatever it could to sell oil to provide for its citizens.

When asked who else Iran might consider selling oil to, Zarif said: “If I told you, we won’t be able to sell it to them.”