Incident Code
Incident Date
Location
Geolocation
Geolocation
Airwars Assessment
(Previous Incident Code: S1673)
Up to five civilians were reported killed in air and/or artillery strikes on the town of al Soussa during ongoing heavy fighting.
Most sources described a Coalition air or artillery strike on one of the town’s bakeries, which reportedly killed four non combatants. Al Alam News for example reported that “US Coalition forces targeted the bakery at Sousse east of Deir al-Zour, which led to the martyrdom and wounding of a number of civilians.”
Baladi News placed the death tolll at four – blaming SDF artillery for the casualties. [However Airwars understands that only the US-led Coalition deployed artillery at al Soussa]: “According to local news sources, SDF forces stationed in Zahra al-Bagouz heavily shelled a bakery in the town of Al-Bagouz, east of Deir al-Zour, on Saturday, killing four civilians and wounding others.”
In what may be a separate or linked event, Smart News noted the following: “A civilian was killed and six others, all women and children, were wounded on Saturday in bombing by International Alliance aircraft on the town of Sousse (126 km southeast of Deir al-Zour) in eastern Syria. A local source told SMART that coalition aircraft bombed the town under the control of Daesh, adding that the injured were four children and two women.”
In the second of their September 2020 civilian casualty reports, the US-led Coalition assessed reports that they were responsible for civilian harm in this strike as “non-credible”, stating that no Coalition actions were conducted in the geographical area at that time.
Key Information
Geolocation Notes
Reports of the incident mention the village of Al Soussa (السوسة), for which the generic coordinates are: 34.528889, 40.9675. Due to limited satellite imagery and information available to Airwars, we were unable to verify the location further.