Geolocation
Airwars assessment
In the morning of Thursday, October 12th 2023, a high-ranked member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine Awad Ghalib al Sultan was killed together with at least five members of the al Sultan family, including a child, in an alleged Israeli strike on the Awad al-Sultan’s family house in the Jabalia refugee camp in the Gaza Strip. At least two family members were injured in the attack.
38-year old Commander Awad Ghalib Al Sultan was killed together with his 5-year old son Suhaib Awad Ghaleb al Sultan. The body of Awad was transferred to the Indonesian Hospital in the neighboring town of Beit Lahia.
Among the killed victims of the attack were two brothers of the wife of the late Awad, a 31-year old Jihad Khaled Mohammad Al Sultan and 19-year old Bahaa khaled Mohammad Al Sultan. Their father Khaled al-Sultan and their mother as well as the children of Jihad were reported as injured in the attack, according to the Facebook post by Wadih Al-Sultan.
Two brothers, a 33-year old Ibrahim Awni al-Sultan and Raed Awni al-Sultan, also lost their lives in the attack, according to the tribute by Mesbah E. Sultan.
Ahmed A Sultan posted an obituary by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine dedicated to the late Awad where it was said that “the Popular Front and the National Movement lost one of its most prominent fighters”. It further noted that Awad had been a member of the Martyr Abu Ali Mustafa Brigades, an active militant group in Gaza, during which he carried out combat missions, especially at sea. He was reportedly arrested in 2010 on a boat off the coast of the Northern Gaza Strip while performing a combat mission, and was released in 2018. Awad was then elected as a member of the General Central Committee of the Popular Front at the Eighth National Congress of the Front in May 2022, and served as an official at the Prisoner’s Department.
Mohammed H Sultan wrote in his Facebook testimony dedicated to Awad and his son: “We belong to Allah and to Him we shall return. With hearts that believe in God’s will and destiny, we mourn my cousin, the martyr, the freed prisoner, Awad Ghaleb al-Sultan, and his son Suhaib Awad al-Sultan”.
Where possible, names have been matched with the Palestinian Ministry of Health list of fatalities in Gaza released on October 26th, 2023.
Where sources identified the belligerent, all sources attributed the strikes to Israeli forces.
On October 9th, 2024 the Airwars Investigations Unit, along with Sky News, published an investigation geolocating and matching airstrike footage released by the Israeli military with incidents in the Airwars archive. In total, Airwars’ team identified 17 strikes leading to civilian harm from the first month of the war, of which the Israeli military itself had published footage. This strike was among the 17. As such this incident has been reclassified as a declared Israeli strike, rather than a likely one.
The incident occured in the morning.
The victims were named as:
Family members (7)
Geolocation notes
Reports of the incident mention the town of Jabalia (جباليا), for which the generic coordinates are: 31.538711, 34.495107. Due to limited satellite imagery and information available to Airwars, we were unable to verify the location further. The Airwars team matched these exact coordinates to a screenshot taken at 0:12 from the left strike video shared by the IDF to Twitter/X.
Summary
Sources (24) [ collapse]
Media
from sources (8) [ collapse]
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Source: Mohammed H Sultan -
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Source: Mohammed H Sultan -
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Source: Wadih Al-Sultan -
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Source: Wadih Al-Sultan -
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Source: Wadih Al-Sultan -
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Source: Wadih Al-Sultan -
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Source: @Jales_tinian2 -
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Source: @Jales_tinian2
Israeli Military Assessment:
Original strike reports
In powerful attack waves, dozens of Air Force fighter jets powerfully attacked terrorist targets in the Gaza Strip during the night, approximately 750 military targets throughout the Strip, including Hamas underground tunnels, military compounds and outposts, senior officials' houses that served as military headquarters, military depots, communication rooms and were destroyed active in the terrorist organizations.