Geolocation
Airwars assessment
Up to eight civilians including one child were killed and 12 others injured in an alleged Russian airstrike on Sarmada, according to local sources.
The Syrian Observatory for Human rights said that eight people (including a child and three people from the Palmyra area, a commander of a checkpoint belonging to a rebel faction and other fighters) were killed in raids by “warplanes believed to be Russian” on areas in the outskirts of the town of Sarmada near the Syrian-Turkish border and “the area of a checkpoint for the Islamic factions near Bab al-Hawa border crossing.”
Reporting on the aerial bombardment on both Bab al Hawa and Sarmada, the Observatory added that the number killed had risen to 28, including four children and a woman, in addition to “an Uzbek family and 22 rebels“.
The Shaam News Network published a graphic video showing the aftermath of strikes. The voice over in the footage says they were carried out by the regime, though the title of the video says they were Russian raids.
Another graphic video, by the White Helmets, showed members of their team being targeted by strikes by “warplanes” – though they did not identify them.
At 1:06 in footage published by Orient News, a civil defence volunteer says: “only two minutes after the raids hit the civilian areas of Sarmada, our vehicles were hit when we arrived at the scene. We now have around 10 dead.”
Arabi21 said that four Russian strikes killed a family of seven and injured 12 others.
The local time of the incident is unknown.
The victims were named as:
Geolocation notes
Reports of the incident mention the town of Sarmada (سرمدا), for which the generic coordinates are: 36.18553, 36.72231. Due to limited satellite imagery and information available to Airwars, we were unable to verify the location further.
Summary
Sources (12) [ collapse]
Media
from sources (3) [ collapse]
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Ali Khaled al-Sultan, killed in an alleged Russian raid on Sarmada. (via, VDC) -
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Russian Military Assessment:
Original strike reports
In its military report published on 25th January, the Kremlin said: “In the course of the last three days, January 22-24, aircraft of the Russian aviation group in the Syrian Arab Republic performed 169 combat sorties engaging 484 objects of terrorists’ infrastructure…crews of Tu-22M3 long-range bombers performed 18 combat sorties from the territory of the Russian Federation in order to engage manpower and hardware of the ISIS near Deir ez-Zor on January 22-24. Flight range reached more than 2,000 kilometers.“