Geolocation
Airwars assessment
At least thirteen civilians were reported killed and eight injured in either a Turkish or Coalition airstrike on al Bab. The Coalition later denied responsibility.
Al Jazeera – citing ISIS – said two families were among 13 dead civilians after multiple “Turkish airstrikes” on the city. The Syrian Observatory said that “no less than 12 civilians from three families were killed while others were wounded by Turkish airstrikes and bombardment by Turkish forces and al-Furat Shield forces targeted al-Bab city which is taken over by IS, including a man with his wife and 3 of their children in addition to another man from the same family, with his wife and 2 of their children, in addition to 2 children with their mother, the number of the dead is likely to rise.”
Shaam News placed the death toll at 20.
Almost all sources blamed Turkey. However LCCSY (which had claimed Turkey was not killing civilians in its actions in northern Syria) said the US-led Coalition was instead responsible. The Syrian Network also blamed the Coalition.
Halaab News (which blamed the Coalition) named the civilian victims.
In an emailed response to a report submitted by Airwars on this and other incidents in December 2016, Coalition officials said the event was presently assessed as ‘Not Credible.’
The local time of the incident is unknown.
The victims were named as:
Family members (9)
The victims were named as:
Summary
Sources (16) [ collapse]
Media
from sources (1) [ collapse]
Geolocation notes
Reports of the incident mention the city of Al-Bab (الباب), for which the generic coordinates are: 36.371972, 37.51631. Due to limited satellite imagery and information available to Airwars, we were unable to verify the location further.
Attached to this civilian harm incident is a provisional reconciliation of the Pentagon's declassified assessment of this civilian harm allegation, based on matching date and locational information.
The declassified documents were obtained by Azmat Khan and the New York Times through Freedom of Information requests and lawsuits filed since March 2017, and are included alongside the corresponding press release published by the Pentagon. Airwars is currently analysing the contents of each file, and will update our own assessments accordingly.
US-led Coalition Assessment:
Civilian casualty statements
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After a review of available information it was assessed that no Coalition strikes were conducted in the geographical area of the reported civilian casualties.
Original strike reports
For December 8th-9th 2016, the Coalition publicly reported no strikes in Aleppo governorate.