(Previous Incident Code: S109)

Five members of one family including three children were killed in a reported 1.30am Coalition strike on the Syria-Iraq border, according to two sources.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights noted the following: “Suspected US-led coalition warplanes carried out several raids after midnight on places around Aysha hospital and other places around the city of al- Bokamal to the east of Deir Ezzor, leading to the death of a man, his wife and one of their children, while others were wounded.”

The Syrian Network published a later investigation, citing an eyewitness it named as Mr. Alaa: “I woke up at the sound of an explosion at about 1:30 a.m…. I went to the building’s roof to see what happened, and I was able to estimate the shelling location. It was near the cement factory and I heard the people’s screams. I went directly to the shelling location and saw great destruction. One of the rockets fell in the middle of a road next to a 2 story building, while the other fell in the middle of that house. Blood and body parts were scattered on the walls and on the road. The victims were transported to the hospital and I tried to enter it too but ISIL’s members prohibited us due to the fear of another airstrike. I heard that 5 individuals from Hasso family were killed in the shelling.”

In its civilian casualty report for October 2019 – published on December 5th of that year, the Coalition assessed this event as ‘not credible, asserting: “July 30, 2015, in Abu Kamal, 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. 2807/CS108 37SFU752155”.

Officials published a location for the event to within 100 metres of where they had remotely assessed the incident.