Geolocation
Airwars assessment
On November 27, 2016, according to the Shaam News Network amongst other local sources, two people were reportedly killed and dozens wounded when an aerial bombing resulted in “several successive explosions” hitting a residential area the town of Zahra, located in the northern countryside of Aleppo, in northwestern Syria.
Where sources identified a belligerent, most attributed the strike to Russian forces. According to Umyyapress some sources described the plane as unidentified. One source mentioned that Turkey had also been accused of carrying out the raid.
@ali_alabras93 reported in a post on Twitter/X that two civilians died and “dozens” more were wounded in four Russian raids on Zahra. Alongside this post, the account also shared two highly graphic images of the two killed victims and two images of munitions.
Sham News Network reported that a warplane “target(ed) the area by mistake, causing strong explosions and fires in several places of the town.”
Umyyapress reported that the two towns were hit with four missile and cluster air strikes, resulting in civilian casualties. This source further reported that Zahra Hospital called for blood donations and “announced the need for blood units from all factions”.
Umyyapress also reported that, according to some sources the “Russian plane targeted at nine thirty in the night with a number of air raids” while other sources said that the plane was unidentified.
Janoubia reported that some sources had attributed the strike to Turkey but that Aleppo Today had blamed Russia and reported that the strike had caused fires.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights also pointed to Russian strikes on the town – which is reportedly loyal to the Syrian regime – reporting that Russia had struck it “by mistake”.
The incident occured at approximately 9:30 pm local time.
Geolocation notes
Reports of the incident mention the town of Al Zahra village (الزهراء ), for which the generic coordinates are: 36.361481, 37.015815. Due to limited satellite imagery and information available to Airwars, we were unable to verify the location further.
Summary
Sources (11) [ collapse]
Media
from sources (2) [ collapse]
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Russian Military Assessment:
Original strike reports
Russia has not reported any specific strikes between November 1st – 30th 2016.
On 6 January 2017, Russia, however, reported: “Since November 8, 2016, the aircraft carrier group of the Northern Fleet consisting of the heavy aircraft carrying cruiser Admiral Kuznetsov, the heavy nuclear missile cruiser Pyotr Velikiy, the large ASW ship Severomorsk, as well as auxiliary vessels of the Black Sea Fleet, has been fulfilling counterterrorist missions on the territory of Syria”, adding that ”in the course of two months of their participation in the combat actions, naval aviation pilots have carried out 420 combat sorties, 117 of them were night ones.”
Additionally, Russia reported that its air forces have carried out strikes in Aleppo during November and December 2016.