Geolocation
Airwars assessment
Up to three civilians, including at least one woman, were reportedly killed in alleged Israeli air or artillery strikes or the shrapnel of Syrian regime defence missiles in Al Hayjana in rural Damascus, Syria on August 31st, 2020. At least one other civilian was injured.
Several sources reported multiple alleged Israeli strikes in southern Syria. Baladi News reported that military sites of regime forces and Iranian militias were targeted. The regime-controlled Syrian Arab News Agency stated that the “Israeli aggression targeted the southern region with bursts of rockets, and our air defence system responded to them.” According to SANA, the shelling took place from the the Jabal al-Sheikh area towards the occupied Syrian Golan.
According to a military source, SANA reported two deaths, seven wounded and material damage, without specifying the number of civilian casualties.
Step News Agency also reported that ” Israeli warplanes targeted, with several air strikes, the sites of the Syrian regime and Iranian militias in the hills surrounding the Al-Kiswah area in the countryside.” Step also wrote that “thee residents of the capital Damascus circulated a video clip documenting the departure of an air defence missile from one of the military barracks of the Syrian regime south of Damascus, and its fall on the ground in the vicinity of Al Kiswa, south of the capital,”
According to a @HalebTV correspondent, one of the regime’s air defence missiles fell on the house of a civilian in Hayjana, killing a woman and injuring three people, as well as destroying the house completely.
@khalediskef, among other sources, identified the killed woman as Mutla Al Sarhan and one of the injured civilians as her husband.
Hasakah Eye concluded that “Israeli shelling killed 11 people, seven Hezbullah tracking elements, three Syrian regime elements, and three civilians after Israeli bombing on the vicinity of Damascus airport”, writing that the strikes targeted Hezbollah elements.
Instead of reporting airstrikes, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported Israeli rocket attacks coming from the occupied Golan Heights.
According to Haaretz News, an IDF spokesman, Brigadier General Hedi Zilberman, addressed the attack this morning, saying: “The IDF has an interest and has strategic goals in the northern arena, and we are doing everything necessary to meet those goals.” In an interview with Gali Tzahal, Zilberman declined to comment on the identities of those killed in the attack, saying: “I do not want to go into these specific issues. “He was confident that the IDF was working day and night to ensure that our strategic goals in the northern arena were properly realized.”
The incident occured at approximately 10:40 pm local time.
The victims were named as:
Family members (2)
Geolocation notes
Reports of the incident mention the village of Al Kiswa (الكسوة), for which the generic coordinates are: 33.357582, 36.245826. Due to limited satellite imagery and information available to Airwars, we were unable to verify the location further.