US Missile Remains Reportedly Recovered from Site of Aleppo Mosque Bombing
March 16, 2017
By
Christiaan Triebert
Updates:
- The geolocation has been confirmed to a site southwest of Al-Jīnah, based on video footage of the aftermath and satellite imagery.
What happened?
In the evening of March 16, 2017, reports came in that a mosque in a Syrian village in the western part of the Aleppo governorate was targeted by an airstrike, killing over 50 attendees of the evening prayer. Most posts on social media blamed either the Russian or the Syrian Air Force for the attack. Some reports, however, accused the United States (US) and the Coalition (CJTF-OIR) it leads, or said that the planes could not be identified. In this investigation, Bellingcat aims to see what we can establish using open source information.
The lowest casualty estimates are by the
Syrian Network for Human Rights (29) and the
Syrian Civil Defence (35; better known as the White Helmets). Other sources have claimed much higher casualty figures.
Where did it happen?
Based on the textual information available, the location of the airstrike is said to be at a mosque in or around Al-Jīnah, an opposition-held village located in the western part of the Aleppo governorate. Some reports call the mosque the ‘Umar ibn Al-Khaṭṭāb mosque.
There are three mosques detectable on satellite imagery in Al-Jīnah itself, however, local activists told Bellingcat that the targeted mosque was relatively newly built just southwest of the village: 36.107721, 36.787080 (
Wikimapia). According to reports, the evening prayer was mainly attended by civilian but used for religious teaching.
Based on
a video uploaded to YouTube showing the aftermath, it is possible to confirm that the two locations match.
Geolocation of mosque bombed by the US is CONFIRMED: southeast of Al-Jīnah, w-Aleppo,
#Syria.
https://t.co/BLjjLH93or pic.twitter.com/j0gKDk7Kzf
— Christiaan Triebert (@trbrtc)
March 17, 2017
When did it happen?
The alleged airstrike took place on March 16, 2017. In several videos of the event, people are saying that the airstrikes took place during the
Isha prayer, meaning that the specific time of the airstrike must have been somewhere between 19:00 and 19:30 local time.
Who is responsible?
Both the Russian Air Force as well as the United States(-led Coalition) have been accused of targeting the mosque in Al-Jīnah.
However, a photo showing an alleged weapon remnant found in the rubble of the mosque may reveal more about the perpetrator of the attack.
The photo was published on Twitter by Sakir Khader, a Dutch journalist, who said he received the photo from local activists on the ground. No results show up in a reverse image search, suggesting the photo has not been indexed by Google and may thus be authentic. The location and authenticity of the photo could not be independently referenced, and we are currently awaiting more photos and videos from the targeted site.
A text in Latin is visible on the alleged weapon remnant: “WT: 52.0 kg”. ‘WT’ is an abbreviation for ‘weight’, possibly referring to the weight of the missile.
Interestingly, the specific font and abbreviation are used on US missiles, as can be seen in
hundreds of reference pictures of AGM-114 Hellfire air-to-surface missiles, as shown below. This fact, combined with the striking similarity of rivets, paint, et cetera, strongly suggests the photographed object is a remnant of a US AGM-variant.
Perhaps even more noteworthy is that the exact same label on a weapon remnant was found at the site of an alleged drone strike on a high value target (HVT) in Syria’s Idlib province in October 2016. At the day that those photos were published by pro-opposition Step News Agency, the US admitted targeting a target with a drone.
If the photo of Mr. Khader thus indeed was taken at the mosque site, it is highly likely that the US is the perpetrator of this attack. It is, however, also worth mentioning that the damage shown in the October 16, 2016, footage of Idlib is considerably smaller than the March 16, 2017, strike, as was noted by Twitter-uster
@sasmojo.
Why did it happen?
On social media, many were fast to see that the mosque was attended by “young men of fighting age”, and that rebel fighters were attending the evening prayer. None of this can be confirmed.
However, it is possible that the US was aiming to kill one or more high value targets (HVTs) of the various groups in Syria that are designated as a terrorist organisation by the US. It is important to note that the US airstrikes targeting HTS, Jabhat Fateh al-Sham (formerly known as Jabhat al-Nusra) have been separate from US-led CJTF-OIR.
CENTCOM did confirm they conducted airstrikes in the Idlib province, as they told Samuel Oakford, an American journalist. Al-Jīnah is 5 kilometres from the governorate border with Idlib.
NEW: CENTCOM says the US conducted a strike in Idlib during the past 6 hours. It is looking into Aleppo mosque strike, which is near border.
— Samuel Oakford (@samueloakford)
March 16, 2017
Bellingcat will contact the US Central Command to comment on the above information, and this article will be updated accordingly.
