When Syria's largest dam, the Tabqa Dam, was struck in 2017, people living in the region first thought it was another terror act carried out by the Islamic State (IS) group which was then in control of Tabqa city and the dam.
However, it later turned out that it was a U.S. strike against the strategic Syrian dam, also known as Euphrates Dam, which held back a 40-km-long reservoir.
"When the IS militants were in control of Tabqa and its dam, we thought they would bomb out the dam if they had to, but it never occurred to us that it was the Americans who did it as they depicted themselves as forces fighting against terrorism," Muhammad Ani, a 27-year-old resident of Tabqa city, told Xinhua.
The bombing on March 26, 2017 of the dam caused the failure of crucial equipment. The river could not pass through and the reservoir began to rise, sparking evacuations downstream.
People of Tabqa were living in fear, as a humanitarian catastrophe would arise if the dam should collapse, Ani said.
"Is attacking IS militants a reason enough to put the lives of civilians at risk?" Ani asked.
After the strike, Ani left Tabqa and sought refuge in Hasakah Province in northeastern Syria. He felt unsafe even though some repair work was later carried out in the dam area.
Khaled Abu Ahmad, also a local resident, chose to stay in Tabqa after the sudden U.S. strike on the dam.
"When the 2017 U.S. strike took place, it shook our areas. We left our homes to see what had happened and we found huge damage in three neighborhoods in Tabqa ... The damage of civilian properties was so obvious," said the 54-year-old man.
Ahmad recalled that a bus carrying civilians was trying to flee Tabqa after the strike but "the U.S. warplanes went after and struck it.""The city lived unforgettable horror during the strikes and people feared that the dam would collapse and kill every living thing in its perimeter," he said, describing the days following the strike as "black and bitter" because people lived without electricity, food or any other life necessities.
Time passed and the U.S.-backed Kurdish Syrian Democratic Forces took over the dam following the defeat of the IS. However, such bleak memory has lingered on and even been strengthened by the recent U.S. airstrikes against the neighborhood of Gweiran in Hasakah under the pretext of targeting IS fugitives from a Kurdish-controlled prison in the area.
Osama Danura, a political expert based in the capital Damascus, told Xinhua that during the Syrian war the United States disregarded the lives of civilians and sometimes intentionally targeted civilians, particularly those who resist its "occupational project.""As long as the U.S. still considers itself above the international law, such things will repeat for sure in many more places," he said, noting what happened in Raqqa "could be tantamount to war crimes."
Slamming the so-called war on terror by the U.S. forces in Syria, Danura said the U.S. campaign didn't completely end the IS or other like-minded groups, calling on the U.S. forces to stop using fighting the IS as an excuse to continue occupying parts of Syria.
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