(Previous Incident Codes: R4266RS4507)

Three children, Salah Ghajar, Huzaifa Saadeddin, and Rand Saad Eddin, were killed on June 9, 2020, when an unexploded cluster bomb, a remnant of a previous airstrike on Idlib, exploded as they played in the garden of their home.

One source notes that Huzaifa and Rand were sister and brother, while several note that Salah was the last remaining survivor of his family, who were killed in a massacre in Wadi Al-Naseem over a year earlier. The victims of that massacre allegedly included Salah’s mother, father, and brothers.

Sources unanimously agreed that the deaths resulted from an unexploded bomb, which many stated was a cluster bomb, that was dropped during a previous strike.

Several sources claim that the bomb was the result of a Russian strike, while others do not mention the belligerent or state more ambiguously that the strike was from Russian-Syrian forces.

Multiple sources note that children are especially vulnerable to unexploded ordnance, and many similar incidents have been recorded over the last several years. Several sources note that the home was located in an area of Idlib under the control of the group Hayyaat Tahrir al-Sham and other armed factions. A nonprofit, Ataa Relief, claimed that its organization had sponsored Salah Ghajar after his family was killed in Wadi Al-Naseem.