(Previous Incident Codes: R885RS984)

In a major civilian casualty event, 20 named civilians – mostly women and children – died and up to 30 more were wounded in airstrikes on Abeen village, according to local media – though sources were conflicted as to whether Russia or the Syrian regime carried out the attacks.

Syrian Press Centre, Al Jazeera, Smart News, other local news sources and residents of the town, reported sighting Russian warplanes.

But Ara News blamed the Syrian regime, claiming that it “targeted and shelled” civilians housing. Baladi News also pointed to Assad warplanes.

There was some conflicted reporting from Shaam News Network. The source initially attributed the incident to the regime, but in a subsequent report claimed the “Russian Airline carried out four successive raids, with rocket stereochemistry on the small village [Abeen Smam’an], targeting residential houses and causing a large massacre of its inhabitants.”

The majority of those killed were children. There is considerable photographic evidence of this claim. Furthermore, these numbers do not include the four civilians that Shaam Network reported were still missing on the 11th of July.

Ara News placed the number of wounded at 20, however it also reported this was the initial toll. A local news source, Madar Daily, put the number of injured much higher at 30. It added that  “it is worth mentioning that this village doesn’t have any armed opposition as it’s far from the front line and most people are displaced from Aleppo and its countryside.”

On the 11th of July, the day after the attack, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said that many people were still trapped under the rubble and the Civil Defence were working to rescue them.

According to the Shaam News Network, Abeen Smam’an was not the only neighbourhood to be struck. It claimed that cluster bombs struck camps for displaced people in Brive Kfrckrman in Western Aleppo.

Halab News Network reported that the overall death toll in Aleppo on the 10th of July was 75. LCCSY placed this much higher at 104 in Aleppo, 142 overall in Syria.