Geolocation
Airwars assessment
According to local sources, three civilians including a woman and a volunteer with the Syrian Civil Defense (White Helmets) called Ahmad Ali al-Ali were reported killed, and between four and seven others injured including a woman and five volunteers from White Helmets when Russian forces or the Syrian regime allegedly targeted Ma’aret Harma and the two teams of the Syrian Civil Defense rescuing civilians there with aerial bombing or artillery systems, on November 12th, 2019.
According to Baladi News, Russian warplanes bombarded the town of Maaret Horma in the southern countryside of Idlib, targeting civilians during the olive harvest, causing several casualties.
In addition to the volunteer who got killed, Syrian Civil Defense said that five of their volunteers were also injured as a result of Assad forces targeting of two civil defense teams who were working to rescue civilian casualties as a result of attacks on Ma’arat Harma. The five volunteers are Abdul Salam Al-Khalf, Abdul Qader Al-Ahmad, Jihad Mohsen, Bassam al-hamd and Ahmed Najjar and “the ambulance they drove was targeted as they were heading to rescue civilians in the town of idlib.”
A tweet by @MUHIDDINTR also named the other two civilians that were killed: Moaz Mahmoud Haj Ahmed and Alia Abdullah Haj Ahmed. Aramme reported that these two civilians were a man and his wife.
@ShahbaPress also mentioned that the attacks also caused significant material damage to the Civil Defense Center in Ma’arat Harma, blaming Russia for that.
The Syrian Network for Human Rights reported that casualties occurred because of “an intensive shelling by Syrian regime forces artillery on an ambulance of Civil Defense in agricultural lands in southwest of Ma’aret Harma village in the southern suburbs of Idlib governorate, while its team was transferring the injured on previous bombing by fixed- wing warplanes we believe were Russian on the same area, on November 12.” Alquds added that “the Russian warplanes targeting the town with an air strike, followed by 16 artillery shelling while the teams were working to treat the wounded and dead.”
While Baladi, ShahbaPress, Edlib Media Center and IdlibPlus blamed Russia for this, the Syrian Civil Defense and the Syrian Network for Human Rights both blamed the Syrian regime.
The incident occured in the evening.
The victims were named as:
Family members (4)
The victims were named as:
Geolocation notes
Reports of the incident mention the village of Maarat Harma (معرة حرمة), for which the generic coordinates are: 35.5497387, 36.5422624. Due to limited satellite imagery and information available to Airwars, we were unable to verify the location further.