(Previous Incident Code: R4557)

During the evening of September 23, 2023, a missile strike killed two civilians (one elderly man and one woman) and injured two others (a child in critical condition and a man) in a displacement camp in the outskirts of Sarmin, east of the city of Idlib in northwest Syria. In a Facebook post by the Syrian Civil Defense, the nephew of one of the victims confirmed the identity of the two killed and the two injured: Muhammad al-Qahit, who was “nearly 100 years old” (with some sources saying 90 years old), and his granddaughter Hanan were killed. The two injured are identified in the same post as Muhammad’s grandson Hussein al-Qahit and great-grandson Zaid. The ages of Hanan, Hussein and Zaid are unknown.

The belligerent’s identity is contested. Most sources attributed the strike to the Russian military and/or to the Syrian regime forces. One source designated “Iranian occupiers” and another one Syrian militias loyal to the regime as perpetrators of the deadly attack.

As a result of the missile strike, parts of the camp caught fire. Muhammad al-Qahit’s nephew, who survived, described the attack as “a very harsh night for us, between death, wounds, fires, and screams.”

A video posted on Twitter/X by AlJazeera Arabic shows the intervention of the Syrian Civil Defence after the bombing, where tents and other parts of the camp on fire are visible. The organisation then tweeted that they were able to treat the injured, recover the bodies of the two victims and extinguish fire in the camp. Images posted by @ShaamNetwork and other local sources show destruction to the camp, including the tents of displaced persons.

In the Syrian Civil Defence Facebook post, Muhammad’s nephew Muhammad Al-Hamad Al-Qahit who survived the attack said: “I lost him and I lost the sessions that used to bring us together and the stories that he told us.” He added that his uncle had “great hopes that we would return to our village” of Abu Maru, a neighbouring village of Hama (west-central Syria).