Raqqa removed from the planet

I'm afraid the Russians are right. The US-led bombing campaign against Raqqa, now the former stronghold of Isis, has reduced the city to an obliterated rubbish tip. It's a tragic consequence of mass bombing that however carefully targeted the airstrikes and however brilliant the pilots are in finding the right grid reference, the resulting explosion and blast brings buildings down. The pictures of Raqqa are horrific. What motivation is there for people to return to their homes from refugee camps if their houses are just a mountain of dust and rubble or have no front wall or roof? More than 1,000 civilians in Raqqa have died. Many of them no doubt at the hands of the brutal Isis occupiers. But the airstrikes will have taken their toll. When you see the pictures it looks like the bombing was indiscriminate. It wasn't, otherwise the US coalition would be facing war crimes but even the most precise laser-guided missiles do not have the ability to kill a group of Isis snipers hiding in a building without bringing the roof down over their heads. One more building destroyed. The Russians who, by the way, reduced Aleppo to ruins with ITS bombing campaign, accused the US of turning Raqqa into a Dresden, the German city that was flattened by allied bombing in the Second World War. Well, that's a deliberately emotive comparison. The bombing of Dresden was NOT a precision operation, it was a fully intended annihilation mission with no thought for the city's civilians. Indeed, it was aimed at the German citizens to try and bring the war to an end. It was in February 1945. Dresden was not a military city, it was not full of Panza divisions or German snipers. The thousands of pounds of munitions, including incendiary bombs, dropped on the city left Dresden in ruins. Moscow's reference to Dresden is unjust, but the before and after pictures of Raqqa do not help the cause of the Americans and British who want to see the defeat of Isis in the Syrian city as a victory.