Incident Code
Incident Date
Location
Geolocation
Geolocation
Airwars Assessment
(Previous Incident Code: S517)
Seven named civilians including four women and a child died in a reported Coalition strike in Raqqah governorate – though there was confusion about whether they had died at Shabhar or Al Matar.
Orient News, citing Raqqa Post, said that seven civilians – five from the Matar family – died. It blamed the Coalition. Raqqa Post reported that an infant (“a couple of months old”) also died. Alwatan put the death toll higher at nine, specifically blaming “American Coalition warplanes”.
Sharqiya Voice said that the Coalition strike was carried out on Al Matar village.
According to the Syrian Network for Human Rights, missiles from Coalition jets killed “six children and their mother”.
In December 2018, the Coalition announced that it had classed the event as Non Credible due to a lack of available evidence of civilian harm: “Mar. 18, 2017, near Shabhar (Raqqah), Syria, via Airwars report. After a review of available information and strike video it was assessed that there is insufficient evidence to find civilians were harmed in this strike.”
Victims
Family members (5)
Individuals
Key Information
Geolocation Notes
Out of 17 sources, 16 identify the location as Shabhar (شبهر). Only one refers to Matar village, this likely an error as one of the civilians killed was named Matar. We are unable to geolocate Shabhar (شبهر). Open sources data suggests the village is located within the Al Granya subdistrict, inside the Raqqa governorate. The generic coordinate for Al Granya subdistrict are: 36.159560, 38.236989. Our estimate is that the village is in the vicinity of 35.9495233, 38.3992767.