(Previous Incident Code: R4612)

Shortly before 9:14 PM on Sunday, October 22, 2023, a missile strike with contested responsibility allegedly perpetrated by Syrian regime forces and/or Russian and/or Iranian military injured four to five civilians, including two women and at least one child, in the residential neighborhoods of the city of Ariha (Jericho) located in the southern countryside of Idlib, Syria.

While the Syrian Civil Defence claimed there were four victims including one child and two women, several other sources, including North Syrian News, stated the strike injured a total of five people, including a man, two children, and two women. None of the victims were named at the time of writing, but the Syrian Civil Defence said in a tweet that all of them had been previously displaced from the city of Maarat al-Numan.

Photos posted on Twitter/X by a number of sources showed an injured child with what appears to be a light facial injury and a young man in a blue T-shirt with what seems like a more serious injury. More details about the nature of their injuries were not reported, but the Syrian Civil Defence took the victims to the nearest hospital.

In addition to injuring civilians, the strike caused material damage to the city of Ariha, as it provoked a fire in an uninhabited house and damaged a medical center as well as the Ahmed Siblo School.

Twitter/X user @dimashqi68 shared a video showing the moment of the strike.

The identity of the belligerent(s) remains unclear, as several sources named the Russian and Iranian military while others – including the Syrian Civil Defence – identified the Syrian regime forces as being responsible for the strike. Therefore, Airwars has graded both Strike Status and Civilian Harm Status as Contested.