Geolocation
Airwars assessment
Likely four, but up to 13 civilians were killed in airstrikes on Saqba, Eastern Ghouta, according to local media.
It remains unclear who was responsible for the raid, with conflicting reports. Some sources claimed that Russian warplanes were responsible, others attributed responsibility to the regime and some could not positively identify warplanes.
Most sources put the death toll for this event at four. Both the Syrian Network for Human Rights and the Saqba Coordinating Facebook Page, named the four killed:
The Syrian Network for Human Rights reported that the four civilians died when “government warplane missiles and artillery shells fired on Saqba city in Damascus suburbs”. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights and Al Jazeera also corroborated claims that the regime were responsible for the incident.
The Al Jazeera correspondent stated that across the countryside of Damascus, dozens were wounded and killed “by artillery and air strikes in night raids by the Syrian regime forces in the Eastern Ghouta to Damascus.”
However, LCCSY who put the death toll for the raids across Kafr Batna and Saqba at 13, attributed responsibility to Russian warplanes.
Syria News also blamed Russian warplanes for the incident, reporting that the four killed was part of a “massacre of the night from Russia”.
Shahba Press reported that a woman was among those killed in Saqba, however, there are no other reports of this.
It is unknown how many were wounded in the event.
The incident occured during the night.
The victims were named as:
Geolocation notes
Reports of the incident mention the town of Saqba, Eastern Ghouta (سقبا), for which the generic coordinates are: 33.519286, 36.382427. Due to limited satellite imagery and information available to Airwars, we were unable to verify the location further.
Summary
Sources (19) [ collapse]
Media
from sources (5) [ collapse]
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Mohammed Barakat was one of the civilians who died in an airstrike on Saqba, Eastern Ghouta. (Via: SaqbaCoordinating1234)
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”.