Geolocation
Airwars assessment
Up to two civilians were killed in an airstrike on Beit Sawa, Eastern Ghouta, according to multiple sources.
It remains unclear who was responsible for the raid, with conflicting reports. Some claimed the regime were responsible, others that Russian warplanes struck the area, and some could not positively attribute responsibility.
One man killed was named locally as Hikmat al-Hamad. White Helmets Rif Dimashq stated in a tweet that he was Palestinian.
Sky News Arabia reported that the killing of one civilian and wounding of others was due to “raids by military aircraft of the government forces on the town of Beit Sawa”.
However, the source, LCCSY, reported that the man was “martyred due to the Russian airstrike on Beit Sawa in Eastern Ghouta”.
7al News are the only source that put the death toll at two, with a media activist source telling them that “two civilians were killed by the bombing on the town of Beit Sawa”.
Multiple sources claim that a “number” of civilians were injured in the incident, with @Syr_Rev_News stating that children and women were injured. However, no other known sources have any more information on the number of people wounded.
The local time of the incident is unknown.
The victims were named as:
Geolocation notes
Reports of the incident mention the village of Beit Sawa, Eastern Ghouta (بيت سوا), for which the generic coordinates are: 33.537531, 36.399937. Due to limited satellite imagery and information available to Airwars, we were unable to verify the location further.
Summary
Sources (13) [ collapse]
Russian Military Assessment:
Original strike reports
Russia has not reported any specific strikes between November 1st – 30th 2016.
On 6 January 2017, Russia, however, reported: “Since November 8, 2016, the aircraft carrier group of the Northern Fleet consisting of the heavy aircraft carrying cruiser Admiral Kuznetsov, the heavy nuclear missile cruiser Pyotr Velikiy, the large ASW ship Severomorsk, as well as auxiliary vessels of the Black Sea Fleet, has been fulfilling counterterrorist missions on the territory of Syria”, adding that ”in the course of two months of their participation in the combat actions, naval aviation pilots have carried out 420 combat sorties, 117 of them were night ones”.