(Previous Incident Code: R4544)

At least two people were killed, an elderly man and an 18-year-old boy, and between three and five people were seriously injured, including a woman, a male child and a female child, when alleged Russian bombs hit a disused water station, near the villages of Urri and Ain Shib, west of Idlib, around midnight on August 22nd 2023. All of the victims were living in the water station after having been displaced and SY-24 reported they were all from the same family. The Syrian Civil Defence responded to the incident, retrieved the bodies, treated some of the injured and secured the area. Many livestock were also killed in the strike.

The majority of sources agreed that two people had been killed but the numbers of reported injuries varied. Baladi News reported a woman and male child were injured. Zaman Al Wasl and The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported that three people were injured and a family remained buried under rubble. Shaam Network and the Syrian Civil Defence reported that five people were injured, including a woman, a male child and a female child.

Almost all sources described the victims who were killed as an elderly man and an 18-year-old boy. However, @molhamteam tweeted that a female child was killed in the bombing, referring to a video posted by Orient News that showed what appeared to be a body at the site.

Local sources told Zaman Al Wasl and Rozana FM that the abandoned water station was inhabited by displaced families from Ruwaiha who kept their livestock there.

@HadiAlabdallah, a Syrian journalist on the scene, claimed in a video posted to his Ttwitter that the family had been sleeping outside due to the hot weather when the bombs fell.

Shaam Network reported that the water station had been targeted with multiple raids and Al Jazeera stated that there had been two raids.

All of the sources that reported on the incident attributed the airstrikes to Russian forces. Both the Russian Information Agency and a Syrian source confirmed that an airstrike had taken place that night but claimed it had been targeting a headquarters or “monitoring center” of the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham group, according to Al-Jazeera.