extensive denial<\/a> of civilian casualties from the incident in early September 2015, telling Buzzfeed that: \u201cA credibility assessment based on the evidence available determined that there was no evidence of civilian casualties that occurred as a result of Coalition airstrikes. As a part of the credibility assessment, imagery taken the day after the strike (12 Aug) was used to look for damage to any houses within a one kilometre\u00a0circle around the target. A collapsed roof would be easily visible on this imagery, but there was no damage noted to any buildings surrounding the target, and there was no evidence of a collapsed roof. Additionally, open source imagery from social media showed a large amount of weapons in the destroyed target building, the only building damaged in the strike. Such weapons storage would not be in a dwelling with children, so it was determined that there were no civilians or children in the target building.\u201d<\/p>\nCENTCOM\u2019s assessment appeared to be based solely on aerial imagery. Buzzfeed contacted rebels on the ground in Atmeh who insisted that homes had been destroyed in the attack, providing photographic evidence to reporters Mike Giglio and Munzer al-Awad.<\/p>\n
A United Nations spokesman urged the Coalition to limit the risks to civilians from its actions: \u201cFrom the beginning of the use of airstrikes by certain countries in Syria, we have called on all those involved to ensure their greatest efforts to avoid any type of civilian casualties.\u201d<\/p>\n
In an Amnesty assessment of the event published in October 2016, the human rights group cited eyewitness Talha al-Amouri, a resident of Atmeh and brother-in-law of the six slain children\u2019s mother: \u201cI was about 50m away when the air strike happened\u2026 Five missiles fell in total. The first fell 10m away from the house, the second and third fell on and next to the house and the last two fell on the building used by Jaysh al-Sunna. We own the building and Jaysh al-Sunna is using it to produce mortar shells but they don\u2019t pay us rent\u2026 We found the women quicker under the rubble; the children took a while to find. The [dead] children [of my brother and sister-in-law] had shrapnel injuries. The neighbours had no such injuries but their heads had exploded.\u201d<\/p>\n
Concluding that the US was indeed responsible for the civilian deaths, Amnesty stated: \u201cThe attack appears to have been directed at a military target, and to have struck and destroyed it, but to have also destroyed neighbouring homes and killed nine civilians within them. As such, the attack may have been disproportionate. The existence of two civilian homes a mere 15m from the military target should have necessitated precautions necessary to minimize risk of loss of civilian life and destruction of civilian objects.\u201d<\/p>\n
A CENTCOM spokeswoman noted at the time that \u201dWe are aware of the reports surrounding Atmeh and are looking into them.\u201c<\/p>\n
However CENTCOM later told Buzzfeed that it had concluded \u201cthere was no evidence of civilian casualties as a result of coalition airstrikes.\u201d [see above]. And responding to a query from Airwars, Centcom stated on October 27th 2015 that \u201cAfter careful review and based on the best available evidence\u201d it had found that \u201callegations of civilian casualties by the Coalition were unfounded and deemed not credible.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Coalition formally announced its findings on Atimeh four years later. In its monthly civilian casualty report for October 2019 \u2013 published on December 5th of the same year \u2013 the US-led Coalition assessed this event as \u2018non credible\u2019, noting: \u201cPreviously Assessed Non-Credible Report: As part of our CIVCAS process in order to maintain transparency and accuracy, we constantly review our tracker to ensure proper release of information. We saw this case had not been previously listed so it is being listed now.\u00a0 1. August 11, 2015, in Atimah, Syria, via self-report. After a review of all available records it was determined that, more likely than not, civilian casualties did not occur as a result of a Coalition action. 68 37SBA923201″.<\/p>\n
It also classed Airwars’ own assessment of the event as a duplicate of the above, noting: “2. August 11, 2015, in Atimah, Syria, via Airwars report. The Coalition actions identified in this allegation are duplicates of those in allegation 68 (Not Credible, published in this report). 2809\/CS111 37SBA915208”.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":0,"template":"","country":[246],"belligerent":[249],"strike_type":[431],"cause_of_death":[448],"targeted_belligerents":[500],"strike_status":[],"civilian_harm_reported":[834],"civilian_harm_status":[837],"belligerent_assessment":[867],"geolocation_assessor":[],"declassified_document":[900],"geolocation_status":[],"observation":[],"munition":[],"casualty":[959,958],"impact":[],"civilian_infrastructure":[],"documentation":[],"citation":[],"class_list":["post-31122","civ","type-civ","status-publish","hentry","country-syria","belligerent-coalition","strike_type-airstrike","cause_of_death-heavy-weapons-and-explosive-munitions","targeted_belligerents-al-qaeda-hts","civilian_harm_reported-yes","civilian_harm_status-fair","belligerent_assessment-non-credible-unsubstantiated","declassified_document-no","casualty-children","casualty-women"],"acf":{"latitude":36.3093144,"longitude":36.6781997,"geolocation_accuracy":"village","multiple_location_incident":null,"geolocations":[{"latitude":36.3093144,"longitude":36.6781997,"geolocation_accuracy":"village","primary_coordinate":true}],"geojson":null,"show_geolocation_caption":false,"geojson_caption":"","media_geolocation":null,"geolocation_notes":"","geolocation_sources":null,"show_internal_notes":false,"internal_geolocation_notes":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/airwars.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/civ\/31122","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/airwars.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/civ"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/airwars.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/civ"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/airwars.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31122"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"country","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/airwars.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/country?post=31122"},{"taxonomy":"belligerent","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/airwars.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/belligerent?post=31122"},{"taxonomy":"strike_type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/airwars.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/strike_type?post=31122"},{"taxonomy":"cause_of_death","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/airwars.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cause_of_death?post=31122"},{"taxonomy":"targeted_belligerents","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/airwars.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/targeted_belligerents?post=31122"},{"taxonomy":"strike_status","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/airwars.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/strike_status?post=31122"},{"taxonomy":"civilian_harm_reported","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/airwars.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/civilian_harm_reported?post=31122"},{"taxonomy":"civilian_harm_status","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/airwars.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/civilian_harm_status?post=31122"},{"taxonomy":"belligerent_assessment","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/airwars.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/belligerent_assessment?post=31122"},{"taxonomy":"geolocation_assessor","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/airwars.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/geolocation_assessor?post=31122"},{"taxonomy":"declassified_document","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/airwars.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/declassified_document?post=31122"},{"taxonomy":"geolocation_status","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/airwars.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/geolocation_status?post=31122"},{"taxonomy":"observation","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/airwars.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/observation?post=31122"},{"taxonomy":"munition","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/airwars.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/munition?post=31122"},{"taxonomy":"casualty","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/airwars.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/casualty?post=31122"},{"taxonomy":"impact","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/airwars.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/impact?post=31122"},{"taxonomy":"civilian_infrastructure","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/airwars.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/civilian_infrastructure?post=31122"},{"taxonomy":"documentation","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/airwars.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/documentation?post=31122"},{"taxonomy":"citation","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/airwars.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/citation?post=31122"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}