Geolocation
Airwars assessment
Two children under the age of 18 were killed during a joint Coalition and Syrian Democratic Forces airdrop operation in the village of Al Zer on July 4th, 2022. Sources were conflicted as to whether the two killed were civilians or members of ISIS.
Al Khabour posted on Facebook that a young man named “Muhammad Fateh Khalaf Al-Daham” and another person were killed during an airdrop operation carried out by the Coalition in the village of Al Zer. Euphrates Post added that the other person killed was an IDP and @19had93eel identified the two people killed as civilians.
According to @syria_news123, a “citizen” was killed and another was wounded by the SDF during an operation with the support of the “American occupation forces,” with @19had93eel specifying that Coalition helicopters participated and that the occupation was carried out at dawn.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) stated that the two men that were killed were accused of working for ISIS and were killed when they resisted arrest. Activists specified to SOHR that one of the men killed was detained for about four months by the SDF and had been released in April, while the other man was accompanied by his mother and was working to distribute financial guarantees to the women of ISIS in the area.
Private sources told Euphrates Post that the operation was carried out at a house near the “Al-Munkar” neighborhood that was inhabited by a displaced family from Aleppo and resulted in the death of a 14 year old member of ISIS named Omar who was from Aleppo whose father was a former member of ISIS and was detained by the SDF, while the other child killed, Muhammad Fateh Khalaf Al-Daham, was a 17 year old who had been released from SDF prison two months ago. The sources added that the two people killed had been holding a lunch feast and that Coalition drones had been flying in the area at the time.
The Syrian Network for Human Rights reported that the two people were shot and killed when SDF personnel raided a house while Orient News referred to the operation as involving “light bombs”.
The incident occured around dawn.
Summary
Sources (18) [ collapse]
Geolocation notes
Reports of the incident mention the village of Al Zer (الزر), for which the generic coordinates are: 35.124387, 40.432541. Due to limited satellite imagery and information available to Airwars, we were unable to verify the location further.