(Previous Incident Code: R3971)

Up to 14 civilians including two women were reported killed and between 11 and 20 others including two children were injured in an alleged Russian forces or Syrian regime airstrike on a vegetables market, Souk Al-Hal, in Maarat Al Numan in Idlib, Syria on December 2nd, 2019 according to local sources.  Multiple sources indicated that 10 or 11 civilians were killed in the initial toll.

@Mohamed2Aldaher reported on Twitter that many of the wounded were in critical condition so it in unclear if the death toll rose any higher. JesrPress reported that Civil Defense teams recovered those injured including “dismembered” people.

Some of those identified killed are: Jihad Al Barq, Abdulhameed Muhammad Al Sbeih, Abdelkhaleq Al Hamidi, Abdelnaser Al Darfeel, Amer Darfil, Abdo Khaled Al Adel and  Hasan Mohammad al Rashid, Jamila Al-Youssef, her sister, Maryam Al-Youssef and her son, Ahmed Salami.

Asala Aledel posted on Facebook about her cousin, Abdo Al-Adl, “the eye sheds tears, the heart grieves, and I grieve for your separation.”

Multiple sources described this incident as a “massacre” and Shehab Agency reported from an eyewitness that “the corpses are charred and burnt, and the body parts of civilians are scatered everywhere. Everyone who was in the market is now between a martyr, a wounded person, and a missing person.”

Human Rights Watch quoted Karim Kamoura, a shop owner who present during the attack when munitions hit a few meters from his store: “The market was busy at the time, because it was morning. When the [munitions] landed, I hid under the table for safety but started to smell burning bodies. When I came out, I saw bodies torn to pieces on the ground.” He said the attack destroyed six of 47 shops in the market, and he spent US$3,000 and six days to repair the damage to his shop.”