Geolocation
Airwars assessment
There were confused reports of the death of Abdel-Fattah al-Haj Hussein. While one source claimed he died in an airstrike while being held prisoner by ISIL, a second source said he died in a Turkish strike – with a third source claiming Mr Hussein died of natural causes.
Raqqa is Being Slaughtered initially reported the death of Abdel-Fattah al-Haj Hussein, saying he was killed in a Coalition strike on an ISIL prison.
However comments posted below the report suggested a different story. According to one, “first of all the martyr is my uncle, he wasn’t a prisoner or anything. He is been out of there for a month enough of your lies.” Another claimed “he died in Turkish raids while he was on his way to Izaz he wasn’t in prison” while a third claimed that “The man died a natural death.”
Al Hadath news agency and Free Syria published the same report in which they named Abdel Fattah al-Haj Hussein as a victim of an alleged Coalition strike and that he was being held as a prisoner by ISIL.
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: 36.371972, 37.5179666. Due to limited satellite imagery and information available to Airwars, we were unable to verify the location further.
Summary
Sources (5) [ collapse]
Media
from sources (1) [ collapse]
Attached to this civilian harm incident is a provisional reconciliation of the Pentagon's declassified assessment of this civilian harm allegation, based on matching date and locational information.
The declassified documents were obtained by Azmat Khan and the New York Times through Freedom of Information requests and lawsuits filed since March 2017, and are included alongside the corresponding press release published by the Pentagon. Airwars is currently analysing the contents of each file, and will update our own assessments accordingly.
US-led Coalition Assessment:
Civilian casualty statements
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The report contains insufficient information of the time, location and details to assess its credibility.
Original strike reports
For February 13th-15th the Coalition publicly reported no strikes in the vicinity of al Bab.