Local sources reported the death of up to twelve civilians (including at least three children) from the same extended family and up to eight more injured as a result of an alleged Coalition airstrike on the village of Hassoun al Basha near Tal al Shayer.
According to a SANA reporter. Coalition bombardments on civilian houses claimed the lives of “12 civilians from Hassoun al-Basha’s family while injuring two others of the same family”.
This reporting was supported by several other media outlets, although Marsad al Hasaka, Step News Agency and An Eye on Al Hassaka both mentioned that the “massacre” took place after a civilian car was targeted.
Marsad al Hassaka, Euphrates Post and An Eye On al Hassaka, among others, published a list of the civilians killed and wounded:
Several sources later reported that Mohammed Hassoun al-Basha, initially listed as wounded as a result of the airstrike, died as a result of his injuries on June 13th at dawn. Multiple sources also reported that Khadija Hussein al Ali, aged thirty, died of her injuries.
Although most sources identified the location of the incident as Hassoun al Basha, a small settlement that is named after the family that inhabits it, others mention Abu Hamdah as the location where the family was harmed by an airstrike. Deir Ezzor Now said that the dead came from three family sub-units: the Hassoun al-Basha family, the Faisal family and the Hassan al-Basha family.
In June 2019 the Coalition announced that it had assessed this allegation of civilian harm as non-credible, noting “After a review of all available strike records it was determined that, more likely than not, civilian casualties did not occur as a result of a Coalition strike.”
The following month, Human Rights watch published a detailed study of the event: “On June 12, 2018, at approximately 9 p.m., several missiles hit a traditional one-story mud home in the small village of Tal al-Jayer, a survivor said. The strike killed 12 civilians, including 3 women and 6 children.
“Human Rights Watch visited the site on February 9. The village is in a remote area with houses far apart. The house that was hit was part of a compound with two other structures nearby where the rest of the extended family lived. The survivor said that the first missile hit the living room of the house, where the 12 people who were killed were seated:
“For a while I couldn’t hear or see anything, I was completely covered in dust. Then I heard crying. Children calling out, “baba, mama.” I slowly pulled myself out of the rubble, it took maybe less than an hour.
“A second missile hit the same structure approximately an hour and a half later, at the door of the room, the survivor said. He said he did not believe the second missile caused any deaths, but that it destroyed the house. “But when the second rocket hit, no one dared to come help us until the next morning,” he said. “Everyone was afraid of the planes.”
“Satellite imagery reviewed also showed an airstrike on the house between 10:30 a.m. on June 11 and 10:30 a.m. on June 12, 2018.
“In addition to the 12 civilians who died, at least 5 wounded were taken to al-Hasakeh National Hospital. The survivor provided the names of those wounded and dead.
“The survivor said that no family members at the compound were ISIS members. He and neighbors said there was no ISIS base in the village. ISIS fighters would pass through the village but did not maintain a permanent presence in the area. Earlier that evening, between 6 and 7:30 p.m., there were clashes near the house, but SDF forces had passed the house without incident, he said.
“He believed the strike may have been targeting an ISIS member’s home that ISIS forces sometimes used about 500 meters away. When he later discussed the strike with SDF officials, they said that the attackers may have had the wrong coordinates. “Our house and the house where the ISIS member was present are both mud houses,” he said. “But they were 500 meters away from each other on opposite sides of the road.”
“The UK authorities reported that an MQ-9 Reaper – an armed drone – had attacked an ISIS mortar position on June 12 in al-Shaddadi – an area in al-Hasakeh governorate that includes Tal al-Jayer – with a direct hit from a Hellfire missile, and coalition forces followed it up with a strike on a nearby building. The US reported that on June 12, three strikes near Shadaddi engaged an ISIS tactical unit, destroying two ISIS fighting positions and three ISIS lines of communication.
“The US also acknowledged receipt of a civilian casualty report from Airwars regarding the incident and on April 22 the coalition told Human Rights Watch that it had opened a civilian casualty assessment into the allegation.
“The survivor said that two days after the strike he had complained to the local SDF headquarters about the strike and a looting incident afterward. He said he received a non-committal response that they would look into it. No member of the SDF or the US-led coalition had contacted him or visited the site of the strike to investigate, but he indicated that the SDF had returned a bag of grain from the looted supplies.
“He also filed with the Syrian government to obtain death certificates for those killed. On June 12, the Syrian government wrote a letter to the United Nations secretary-general and the UN Security Council criticizing the Tal al-Jayer attack and calling on the Security Council to condemn such attacks and take action to stop them.”
On July 2nd, the British Parliamentary Under-Secretary of Defence denied involvement in the incident in an answer on a parliamentary question on whether RAF planes had been responsible for the civilian harm in Hassoun al Basha: “UK aircraft conducted a single strike on 12 June 2018. Ministry of Defence officials have cross referenced the village name with coordinates of that strike and established that they differ by approximately four miles and that the UK did not strike any buildings. Therefore, from the evidence available, we have no reason to believe that the UK was responsible for any civilian casualties on 12 June 2018.”
The incident occured at approximately 9:00 pm local time.
