Geolocation
Airwars assessment
A badly wounded Syrian refugee told Buzzfeed that he believed his injuries had been caused by a Coalition airstrike at Palmyra, although no strikes at that location had been reported at the time (the first publicly reported Coalition strikes on Palmyra were on September 9th 2015.)
Mohamed Raja, aged 23, lost his right arm and was paralyzed from the waist down after being caught in an airstrike on a passing oil tanker. “He and his family believe it was a coalition attack because of its precision. But the coalition has never announced any strikes in the city, while the regime bombed it heavily that day, making it unlikely that the coalition was to blame,” noted Buzzfeed.
In its monthly civilian casualty report for October 2019 – published on December 5th of that year – the Coalition assessed the event as ‘non credible’, noting that “July 9, 2015, in Palmyra, Syria, via Airwars report. After a review of all available records it was assessed that no Coalition actions were conducted in the geographical area that corresponds to the report of civilian casualties. 2796/CS096 37SDU350426”.
Coalition officials also provided Airwars with a geolocation to within 100 metres of the area reviewed.
Based on available information, we assess this as a likely regime strike.
The local time of the incident is unknown.
The victims were named as:
Geolocation notes
Reports of the incident mention the city of Palmyra (تدمر), for which the generic coordinates are: 34.569294, 38.291216. Due to limited satellite imagery and information available to Airwars, we were unable to verify the location further.
Summary
Sources (2) [ collapse]
US-led Coalition Assessment:
Civilian casualty statements
-
July 9, 2015, in Palmyra, Syria, via Airwars report. After a review of all available records it was assessed that no Coalition actions were conducted in the geographical area that corresponds to the report of civilian casualties. 2796/CS096 37SDU350426
Original strike reports
No publicly-reported Coalition strikes between July 8th-10th 2015 matched this report.