Shortly before 3:37 AM on Saturday, October 7th, 2023, a civilian man was killed and a number of civilians were reportedly injured due to an artillery strike with the contested responsibility – allededly perpetrated by the Syrian regime and/or Russian or Iranian military in the city of Al Atareb in the western countryside of Aleppo, Syria.

At 3:37 AM, Twitter/X user Radwan Muhammad Al Shahwan Altai (@ralshhwan9) reported about the attack on the city of Al Atareb with cluster missile launchers. Later, at 4:29 AM the Syrian Civil Defense (SCD) also reported on the incident and noted treating an injured civilian and handling the body of the man who was killed to his family, in addition to a photo of one of its volunteers in the ambulance. Later SCD wrote in its report that one man was killed and another one was injured reportedly by regime forces missile strikes on October 7, 2023. Twitter/X user Ahmed Suleiman @ahmdsly89548159 and @Mohab_Nasser2 reported about a number of civilians injured the attack too, yet an exact number was not disclosed.

Twitter/X user @Wolveri07681751 reported  that cluster munitions were used on civilians, leading to fires, and shared a video where sounds of explosions were heard. However, it is not clear whether this video referred to the strike that led to the civilian casualties or to a later one.

According to the Twitter/X user Ahmed Suleiman (@ahmdsly89548159), the victim who was killed was Muhammad al-Bakri Abu Nidal, a refugee displaced from Hama. He was an elderly man with thick eyebrows, a big black and gray beard, and black eyes wearing a black turban, a white t-shirt, and a military color shirt on top of it.

Where sources identified the belligerents, they attributed the responsibility for the strike to the Syrian regime forces alongside the Iranian and Russian military.