Geolocation
Airwars assessment
Three civilian men were reported killed in an event near the town of Al Bab, after a US aircraft dropped a 500lb bomb on a fleeing ISIL suspect. They were later named by the VDC and Syrian Martyrs.
Social media also reported civilian deaths, with one tweet noting: “At least two civilians martyred in the air strikes conducted by US led Coalition war planes on IS-held Al Bab.” This was accompanied by a graphic photograph apparently showing major damage to the town.
Monitoring site Mugrn News, which also reported two civilian deaths, claimed that both coalition and Assad regime aircraft had been seen in the vicinity of Al Bab on the day, making attribution difficult. And VDC described Fadi al-Kassem being “Martyred during the regime`s army forces rocket shelling.”
However privately, CENTCOM conceded that an American aircraft was responsible for the incident. Following an attack on an ISIL checkpoint a fleeing alleged militant was targeted with a 500lb GBU-49 bomb. According to a report declassified in August 2015, this “re-attack” killed the suspect, damaged a building and also resulted in “2x nearby pax possibly injured.”
A rare full inquiry was ordered into the incident. On July 30th 2015, CENTCOM informed Airwars that this had concluded and found no evidence of civilian casualties: “We have no additional information available to provide at this time. Currently, CENTCOM plans only to release those investigations where the preponderance of evidence supports a finding that Coalition airstrikes resulted in civilian casualties.“ Requests for an expedited release of the report were denied on the grounds that this was not “currently newsworthy.”
The local time of the incident is unknown.
The victims were named as:
Geolocation notes
Reports of the incident mention the town of Al-Bab (الباب), for which the generic coordinates are: 36.3709658, 37.5179666. Due to limited satellite imagery and information available to Airwars, we were unable to verify the location further.