Geolocation
Airwars assessment
On April 4th, 2023 at 12:15am, an airstrike either launched by Israeli forces or an air defense missile launched by the Syrian regime hit a glass factory in Al-Kisswa, south of Damascus, in Rif Dimashq, resulting in the death of up to two civilians.
Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA), a Syrian regime-controlled news source, reported that two civilians were killed and martial damage was caused by the airstrikes. According to Orient news, Amr Niam was one of the people killed and he was described by loyalist pages as someone who reportedly fought 12 years ago with the Assad militia and was killed by “friendly fire” after his demobilization.
Athar Press quoted the head of the municipality of Al-Kisswa, Muhammad Al-Hayek, who said that “the young man (Omar Naim) works as a watchman in the glass warehouse that was targeted at dawn today.” @Kenan80490227 on Twitter corroborated that he was a facility guard, writing about the attack “in which the facility guard spent his last night before he was killed”.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights posted on Twitter that one of the dead was a member of “Hezbollah”.
The glass plant sustained infrastructure damage as well. Al-Hayek clarified that the 500 square meter factory was almost. completely damaged. He said, “The glass goods in it have become like sand, in addition to the roof of the warehouse falling to the ground along with the walls,” indicating that this warehouse is private and does not belong to any government agency.
A military source speaking to Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA) claimed that the Syrian regime air defence system intercepted the missiles and shot them down. Radio Al Kul quoted Voice of Capital, which attributed the civilian casualties to a Syrian regime air defense missile and not an Israeli missile.
The incident occured at 00:15:00 local time.
The victims were named as:
Geolocation notes
Reports of the incident mention the city of Al Kisswa (الكسوة), for which the generic coordinates are: 33.358774, 36.252222. Due to limited satellite imagery and information available to Airwars, we were unable to verify the location further.