Geolocation
Airwars assessment
At least one child was killed and another child was injured from the explosion of a cluster bomb that was left behind by alleged Russian airstrikes a few months prior in the village of Arafeih in eastern Hama, according to local media.
The child killed from the cluster bomb was a 12-year-old boy; his brother also sustained minor injuries from the explosion.
Both @SamirMaleh1 and the Violations Documentation Center identified Russian planes as responsible for dropping the cluster bomb, while the Hama East Facebook page did not publish who the culprit was.
The local time of the incident is unknown.
The victims were named as:
Geolocation notes
Reports of the incident mention the village of Arafeih (قرية عرفة), for which the generic coordinates are: 35.38178, 37.02376. Due to limited satellite imagery and information available to Airwars, we were unable to verify the location further.
Summary
Sources (3) [ collapse]
Media
from sources (1) [ collapse]
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This media contains graphic content. Click to unblur.
Image of the victim of a cluster bomb explosion in Arafeih, Dec. 11th (via Hama East Facebook)
Russian Military Assessment:
Original strike reports
Russia has not reported any specific strikes between December 1st – 31st 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.”