Between around 11:00-11:30 PM on Wednesday, October 23, 2024, an alleged Turkish drone strike on the village of Bari and the residential complex Digor (Dokri) in the Shingal District of Iraqi Kurdistan injured a woman named Enstar Khodada Ali Murad in Digor and another civilian in Bari. Roj News reported that the strike on Digor
At 11 AM on Friday, August 23, 2024, two female journalists, Hero Baha al-Din and Golestan Tara, were killed and six civilians, including a social media professional and video editor named Rebin Bakr, were injured as a result of an alleged Turkish drone strike on a car carrying a group of media cadres for Sterk TV
On Tuesday, September 10, 2024, at 5:05 PM, up to three women were injured, one of them critically, in an airstrike or drone attack allegedly perpetrated by the Turkish military on a residential house in the Makhmour (also called Rustam Judi) IDP camp located 60 Km southwest of Erbil in the Erbil region of Iraq.
During the afternoon of Wednesday, September 4th, 2024, three members of one family, including a child, were killed as a result of an alleged Turkish drone strike on a civilian Toyota Land Cruiser vehicle on the Dokan-Khalkan road near the village of Khalkan in the Dokan district of the Sulaymaniyah Governorate of Iraq. Muzaffar Hussein
Around 6:00 a.m. on Thursday, July 18th, 2024, Osman (Othman) Roshdi was killed and a civilian was seriously injured by a bombing attack reportedly carried out by the Turkish military in the Khastu village located in the south of Şiladziin in the north of Dohuk Governorate, southern Kurdistan, Iraq. Sources are conflicted as to whether
At noon on Friday, July 12th, 2024, the area at the foot of Mount Shekoyan and around Mount Loulan in the Bradost area in Erbil of Iraq’s Kurdistan Region was hit by an alleged Turkish airstrike, injuring two civilians. Multiple news sources reported the time and the location of the incident and that two people
On Monday, July 8th, 2024, a declared Turkish drone struck a vehicle belonging to ÇIRA TV and ÇIRA Radio, resulting in the injury of six people, including three media personnel, in Sabahiya village, located on the road linking Sinjar district and Qayrawan district in the western part of Mosul city located in the Nineveh Governorate,
The US has declared that its military actions in 2022 resulted in no civilians killed or injured, the first such release since a landmark policy intended to overhaul American practices and approaches to civilian harm across the globe.
On Sunday, April 28th, 2024, two civilian men, Ahmed Haidari and Rasoul Yunus, were killed and one civilian was reportedly injured in an airstrike allegedly perpetrated by Turkish aircraft in the Bradost mountains located in the east of the Erbil Governorate, Iraq. According to the American CPT organization quoted by the Kurdistan Revolution in Arabic Facebook
Summary
Sunday 21 April 2024 – RAF Typhoons struck a rocket launcher in northwest Iraq.
Detail
On the evening of Sunday 21 April, a pair of Royal Air Force Typhoon FGR4s, flying as part of the long-standing global coalition, conducted a routine patrol over Syria and Iraq as part of Operation Shader. Rockets were observed being launched in northwest Iraq against coalition forces. Acting rapidly in defence against this attack, our aircraft successfully employed a single Paveway IV, precision guided bomb to destroy the rocket launcher system.
In November 2023, Airwars and Article 36 co-convened a workshop to explore military perspectives on the opportunities and challenges arising in the implementation of the Political Declaration on Strengthening the Protection of Civilians from the Humanitarian Consequences Arising from the Use of Explosive Weapons in Populated Areas.
In the workshop report, we summarise the discussions held and challenges identified during the two-day workshop. We draw on these lessons, and our wider work on EWIPA, to make recommendations to states and militaries working to implement the declaration, and civil society organisations focused on supporting this process.
The workshop focused on exploring operational policies and practice regarding the use of explosive weapons during military operations in populated areas, with reference to the Declaration. Using a scenario-based approach, the workshop aimed to identify, and raise awareness of, changes to policies and practices that are necessary for the effective implementation of the operational provisions of the Declaration, ahead of the first official follow-up meeting of states and civil society which will be held in Oslo next week.
Participants in the workshop included active and retired members of national armed forces and defence ministry officials from 8 Western states, as well as participants from NATO, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), and civil society organisations.
Key findings
A summary of the key recommendations and good practices outlined during the workshop are summarised below:
The full workshop report can be found here.
On April 14th, 2024, at 6:30 Thursday evening a man, father of three kids, was killed by a drone strike on a vehicle reportedly perpetrated by Turkish forces in the Sidkan District in Erbil Governorate. It is contested whether the man killed was a civilian or a member of the Peshmerga. The victim was Sorour Qader,
On Sunday, April 14th, 2024, a young Kurdish man named Muhammad Saeed Muhammad was reported dead as a result of an alleged drone strike by the Turkish military on his house located in the village of Galala in the Mawt (Maute) district of the Sulaymaniyah Governorate in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq. At 3:07 pm,
Airwars has won a Sigma award recognising excellence in data journalism, while the organisation’s investigative work has also been nominated three times at the forthcoming Amnesty Media Awards.
The article, titled The Year of the Shahed, was one of ten winners selected by Sigma from a total of 591 submissions by more than 300 news organisations.
The investigation involved gathering all open-source allegations of Russia’s use of the Iranian-made Shahed drone to attack Ukrainian civilians, as well as researching the European links to the specific component parts found in them. It was produced in collaboration with the German newspaper Der Spiegel after a grant by Investigative Journalism for Europe.
A still image from the article
Commenting on the article, the Sigma prize committee said: “The increasing digitisation, mechanisation, and automatisation of warfare is a worrying trend that will likely accelerate in years to come. This story about affordable but highly effective Iranian drones (actually, pseudo-missiles) used by Russia in Ukraine is a good example of what investigative and data journalism can do to warn readers about such trends.”
“The piece combines in-depth data analysis of attack patterns, first-person accounts of their consequences, and plenty of context of both the history of this weaponry and of the way it’s operated. The story weaves the narrative with photographic and audio evidence, along with a simple but effective series of data visualizations, scrollytelling sequences, and well-executed vector 3D renderings of the drones. In summary, it’s a rich multimedia experience.”
The article was written by Sanjana Varghese, Nikolaj Houmann Mortensen, Iryna Chupryna and Rowena De Silva of Airwars, as well as Oliver Imhof and Alexander Epp of Der Spiegel. It was designed visually by Airwars’ Júlia Nueno and Azul De Monte.
Among the other projects recognised by the judges were international news organisations including the Financial Times and Bloomberg, as well as local news organisations in Nigeria, Bangladesh and elsewhere.
The full award ceremony can be viewed below and Nikolaj Houmann Mortensen will discuss the article at a panel discussion during the International Journalism Festival 2024 in Perugia, Italy on April 20, 2024.
Separately, Airwars received three nominations for the forthcoming Amnesty Media Awards. The awards celebrate vital stories related to issues of human rights, with the winners to be announced on on May 9th, 2024.
Airwars was the smallest organisation to have been nominated, with almost all other candidates major international news organisations. Only the BBC and The Guardian received more than three nominations.
Airwars and The Guardian were nominated in two categories for a joint investigation into the hidden civilian toll of British airstrikes in Iraq and Syria during the campaign against the so-called Islamic State. The two-year investigation combined months of document analysis to identify likely UK strikes, with reporting from the ground in Mosul speaking to victims.
The longform reportage from Iraq, written by Emma Graham-Harrison of The Guardian and Airwars’ Joe Dyke, was nominated for Best Written Feature, while the Airwars immersive article was nominated in the digital creativity section. The entire investigation has also been nominated in the Outstanding Investigative Reporting category at the forthcoming Fetisov Awards.
Separately Airwars’ Sanjana Varghese was among four nominees in the The Gaby Rado Award for New Journalist category for her work leading the Shahed investigation.
On the evening of Thursday, March 7th, 2024, two civilian farmers were killed and one other was injured in an alleged airstrike by the Turkish forces on the village of Deuki near the Gara mountain located in the Shiladzi district, Duhok governorate in southern Kurdistan, Iraq. According to the sources, the director of Shiladzi district,
On Saturday, March 2, 2024, a farmer was injured due to an airstrike reportedly perpetrated by Turkish forces on villages in the Batoufa district within Amadiyah district in the Duhok governorate located in the south of the Kurdistan region, Iraq. According to sources, the incident happened in mountainous villages where a farmer was injured. No
Around 18:30 on the evening of Tuesday, February 20th, 2024, an alleged Turkish airstrike killed two elderly men and injured at least one other civilian in the village of Kafya, in the Dinatra area of Akre [Akri/Aqra] District of Duhok, northern Iraq. The two victims were 65-year-old Bashir Omar and 70-year-old Arif Taha, residents of
Up to three civilians were reported killed and up to 15 others were wounded by declared US airstrikes on the Al-Sikak area in the city of Al-Qaim, Iraq early in the morning on February 3, 2024. Between three and five medical personnel in the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF) were also allegedly killed. Another 11 PMF
Between 6 and 8 PM on Thursday, December 28th, 2023, at least five people were killed and two others injured after an alleged Turkish drone strike on the village of Karki in the Sinjar district of Mosul province. The civilian status of five of the men killed is contested within the sources. Those killed were
On the 25th of December, 2023, a declared U.S. airstrike was conducted against the headquarters of the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF) in Hilla, central Iraq, killing one civilian and injuring two female civilians: Shadhadan Karim Mirza, and Wasnah Maher Kahem. One member of the PMF was also killed and up to 19 other members of
The announcement follows several years of advocacy and detailed discussions between the Ministry of Defence (MoD) Protection of Civilians team and a consortium of NGOs including Airwars, Pax, Utrecht University, and CIVIC, in the so-called ‘Roadmap process’.
In the letter to parliament, the Dutch format for setting out policy, the Minister of Defence, Kajsa Ollongren, outlined two major commitments; one for operations that have already finished and one for future engagements. To the former, the Minister acknowledged current gaps in the MoD’s approach, emphasising; “At present there is no specific counter for NGOs and victims/next of kin to report suspicions of civilian casualties to the Netherlands. The Defense Department will therefore set up a counter where these parties can report suspicions of civilian casualties in relation to [military deployments] that are already terminated”.
The Netherlands was one of several nations who contributed with air support to the US-led anti-ISIS coalition, Operation Inherent Resolve (OIR), in Iraq and Syria between 2014 and 2019. Our evidence suggests that at least 8,199 civilians have likely been killed in Coalition airstrikes. The Dutch have admitted to some of these deaths – though often only after major international investigations have exposed Dutch involvement. This includes a strike on the Iraqi city of Hawijah in 2015, in which more than 85 civilians were killed, which prompted an independent inquiry and a major court case with a verdict expected in January 2024.
By establishing a dedicated civilian harm reporting mechanism, the Netherlands is following in the footsteps of the US and setting itself ahead of the other allies which contributed to OIR. This announcement comes shortly after Airwars took the UK Ministry of Defense to a tribunal, in part for its lack of clarity on mechanisms to protect civilians during its role in the same campaign.
If implemented well, this new Dutch mechanism will make it possible for civilians who have been affected by strikes to report the details directly to the Ministry of Defense. It will also provide NGOs, such as Airwars, which gather evidence of harm with a systematic approach to submitting allegations. This has long been identified by NGOs as best practice in civilian harm mitigation and response.
When it comes to civilian harm reporting in future conflicts, Ollongren states in the letter; “I consider it desirable that NGOs and victims/survivors can report to the relevant coalition. Where relevant, the Netherlands will therefore endeavor to organize this well in a coalition before the start of the Dutch contribution. Should a coalition in question be unable to adequately organize a reporting structure, Defense itself will ensure the possibility to report suspicions to the Netherlands“.
Coalitions, which have come to define engagement in recent conflict by Western states, often introduce uncertainty and bureaucratic complexity on the responsibility and accountability for civilian harm. It is notable that the Netherlands commit themselves to setting up a Dutch mechanism if a coalition one cannot be agreed upon.
As with all policy commitments, the eventual effect depends on how well it is implemented. This is particularly relevant in this case, as a new US-led coalition with Dutch participation was announced on the same day that the letter came out. The new coalition, Operation Prosperity Guardian, will respond to Yemen-based Houthi attacks on shipping in the Red Sea. Yemen has seen some of the most brutal and sustained civilian harm in the last decade, from both the Houthi forces, but also the US-backed Saudi Coalition.
The Netherlands participation in this new coalition does not yet meet the threshold required for an ‘Article-100 letter’, the system by which civilian harm considerations, such as a reporting mechanism, would be announced and established. However Dutch involvement in this and future operations will be a testing ground for these new commitments, which so far puts the Netherlands apart from many of its allies.
At around 7AM on Tuesday, December 5th, 2023, a man was killed and up to three others injured after an alleged Turkish bombardment in the Bamerni subdistrict of Amedi, in Dohuk Governorate. Gulan Media named the deceased as 44-year-old Ali Jamil Kalash, the father of four children. Kalash was near his home when he died:
On Tuesday, October 17th, 2023, one man was killed and up to three other civilians, women, were injured after an alleged Turkish drone strike on a car in the Kani Kindi village in the Koya district of Kurdistan, Iraq. The car was reported to have belonged to citizens of the Makhmour refugee camp; the driver
A woman was injured after an alleged Turkish drone strike hit a home in the Makhmur camp at approximately 9:25AM on October 13th, 2023. The woman, 50-year-old Aisha Muhammad Ahmed, was a resident of the camp, which houses between 10,000 to 12,000 displaced Kurds. Her injuries, many of which look to be on her face
On October 7th, 2023, a civilian was killed and at least three civilians—a woman and two boys— were injured after an alleged Turkish drone strike on the Makhmour Camp in the Erbil Governorate of the Iraqi Kurdistan region. The woman, who remains unnamed, was reported to be 72-years-old (born in 1951), and appears to have
A woman was killed and a man injured by two drone strikes, allegedly conducted by the Turkish military, on the village of Bugriskan, in the Sinjar district on September 27th, 2023. The strikes were also reported to have killed six Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) militants. Bas News reported that the casualties occurred in “two separate
On the 24th of August 2023, a drone strike is believed to have killed either four civilians or four PKK fighters, two of them in medical roles, in the village of Merg Mir in the Bradost region in Erbil Governorate. According to several news sources, including Roj News, Hawar News Agency and Kurdistan 24, the
On August 11, 2023, three civilians, including at least one woman (who may have been under 18), were reportedly killed after being struck by a Turkish drone in the Penjwin district of Sulaymaniyah governorate. According to media coverage of this event, the victims were killed while driving towards the Iranian border. In its coverage of this
On August 6th, 2023, an alleged Turkish airstrike or drone strike in Jamanki, Dohuk governorate struck a car and killed a civilian named Alain Ismail and seriously injured a civilian named Hashem Shaker. According to Altaakhi and Kurdistan 24 reports, Alain Ismail had been married five months before he tragically passed away. Further information about
On August 6th, 2023, an alleged Turkish drone strike hit Gnartuy village in Suliemaniah province, Iraq; according to Shafaq News, the strike killed one civilian and injured another, while Alaraby and Roj News reported that the strike injured two civilians. Alaraby reported that one civilian was from Halabja and that another held Syrian Kurdish nationality, although