In its January 25th 2018 civilian casualty report, the Coalition reported that a civilian casualties allegation near At-Tanak is currently being assessed: “#1 Nov. 7, 2014 near At-Tanak Oilfield, Syria via regional human rights organization report.”
Further research by our Syria team indicated that this incident was in fact previously known to Airwars, but had not been linked to this specific location. At the time, a single source, the Violations Documentation Center, claimed that two male civilians, from the same family, were killed during a coalition airstrike on the village of Al Zir.
This source was initially archived as separate incident S021. Further research found more than a dozen of other sources corroborating the death of the two victims, all stating the airstrike took place near al Tanak oil field in al Sha’itat desert. Subsequently, Airwars merged the two separate events into incident S023a on February 22nd, 2018.
On the 10th and 11th of November, a couple of sources reported the death of one civilian male Abd Al Kader Ibrahim Al Saleh. We initially had this as a separate incident that took place on November 10th S025 but further research revealed this as the same incident. Syrian Human Rights committee specified that he died “due to injuries sustained in a coalition airstrike on al Tanak oil fields” a few days earlier.
On the 11th another male civilian Rashed Hamdan Al Abd al Jassem was reported killed in alleged coalition raids on ‘one of the oil fields in the eastern countryside a few days ago’. We have this listed as a separate incident [CS028] but there is a chance these two incidents are linked.
When Deir Ezzor Under Fire reported on the incident, they stated that it happened “an hour ago”, indicating that the airstrike allegedly took place around 11pm local time. Most sources identified the “International Alliance” or the US-led “Arab-International Alliance” as the culprit.
In their February 2020 civilian casualty report, the US-led Coalition assessed reports that they were responsible for civilian harm in this strike as “non-credible”, stating that after a review of all available records it was determined that, more likely than not, civilian casualties did not occur as a result of a Coalition action.
The incident occured at 23:00:00 local time.
