Geolocation
Airwars assessment
In what has been described as a massacre, committed by both Russian and Assad regime and coalition warplanes, between 10 and 23 civilians were killed and as many as 35 more wounded on July 19th in Idlib city. Other sources claimed that the Coalition was involved in the incident. According to Shaam News Network the raids took place just before midnight.
A local journalist tweeted that three locations in the city were targeted. “Russian warplanes shelling targets three areas in Idlib; Al-Nakhla roundabout, Al-Saha parking lot near Omar Bin Al-Khattab mosque and young offenders jail”. He also reported that 10 were killed and 35 civilians were injured.
Smart News reported that 10 civilians were killed, and a local added that an entire family including a woman and her unborn baby were included in those killed. Smart News called the incident a massacre and also blamed Russia for the airstrikes.
Syrian Network for Human Rights blamed “allied warplane shelling” for the airstrike.
A local news channel tweeted that “At least 12 martyrs and and many injured due to Russian warplanes shelling in neighbours of Idlib tonight.” However, another local news channel – Alsouria News – claimed that “23 were martyred including children and no less than 30 wounded in Russian and coalition warplanes shelling in Idlib.” This was the highest reported death toll.
Most of the civilians killed were already displaced from Aleppo, according to Shaam News Network.
Activist Ghayth Al-Sayed told Alsouria “a Russian warplane and another one from the coalition took turns in shelling Idlib with more than 15 raids in the morning which killed 15 in initial toll and wounded more than 30 who were taken to medical points for treatment.”
The scale of the injuries meant that local field hospitals announced it needed quantities of blood for the injured.
The raids continued overnight in Idlib to the 20th of July.
In the second of their March 2020 civilian casualty reports, the US-led Coalition assessed reports that they were responsible for civilian harm in this strike as “non-credible”, stating that no Coalition actions were conducted in the geographical area at that time.
The incident occured at approximately 11:00 pm local time.
Geolocation notes
Reports of the incident mention the city of Idlib (إدلب), for which the generic coordinates are: 35.93062, 36.63393. Due to limited satellite imagery and information available to Airwars, we were unable to verify the location further.
Summary
Sources (7) [ collapse]
Media
from sources (3) [ collapse]
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The destruction caused by alleged Russian and coalition warplanes on 19th July 2016, Idlib. (via Alsouria).
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.
Unknown Assessment:
Original strike reports
Russia has not reported any strikes between July 16th – 27th 2016.
Syrian Regime Assessment:
US-led Coalition Assessment:
Civilian casualty statements
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July 19, 2016, in Idlib, Syria, via Airwars report. After a review of all available records it was assessed that no Coalition actions were conducted in the geographical area that corresponds to the report of civilian casualties. 3017/CS273a 37SBV865788