July 13, 2018
The research was initiated by Jeanne Sanya and conducted collaboratively with Christiaan Triebert. The Russian Ministry of Defence accused the American-led Coalition of bombing a block of civilian buildings in Raqqa, Syria. But a year earlier, the Russians said it was them who targeted leader of the Islamic State in those exact same buildings. What’s…
July 10, 2018
By Noor Nahas
Information from groups involved in international conflicts has never been as accessible as it is now. Rebel groups run social media accounts, video of missile launches are posted to Twitter, and the production value of propaganda has skyrocketed. For researchers and journalists who do not master the Arabic language, the same problems still exist: how…
July 9, 2018
By Rao Komar
The spread of social media and smartphones throughout the Middle East has created a truly enormous amount of publicly available documentation of conflicts in the region. Whether in the form of videos or photos, from combat footage to potential war crimes — a lot of things are routinely documented and uploaded to various sites like…
July 4, 2018
Tracing the evolution of communication in the Syrian conflict reveals complex networks of coordination. The lack of direct access is at the core of this evolution—for international actors to provide humanitarian and monitoring support, for regional actors to be included in the decision- making process, and for civilians’ concerns and experiences to be considered. Changing…
June 18, 2018
Recent eruptions of violence in Libya’s so-called ‘oil cresent’ between armed forces loyal to Haftar’s Libyan National Army (LNA) and rival armed groups resulted in another row of burning oil tanks. In the areas around oil terminals at Es Sider and Ras Lanuf, clashes continued for days. As a result of the shelling, various oil…
June 13, 2018
On June 13th 2018 the OPCW Fact Finding Mission (FFM) confirmed the use of Sarin and Chlorine in Al-Lataminah on March 24th 2017 and March 25th 2017 in a new report. This would make the 3rd confirmed use of Sarin as a chemical weapon by the OPCW FFM in a 10 day period between March…
May 30, 2018
In the coming weeks it is expected the OPCW Fact Finding Mission (FFM) will release its report on the April 7 2018 chemical attack in Douma, Damascus. The purpose of the OPCW FFM is to establish whether or not chemical agents were used, not to assign blame. Prior to Russia vetoing its renewal at the…
May 16, 2018
Today’s OPCW-FFM report on the February 4 2018 chemical attack in Saraqib, Idlib, reveals not only information about the Saraqib attack, but also the broader use of chemical weapons in Syria, and additional evidence to support the theory Syrian government forces were behind the April 7 2018 chemical attack in Douma, Damascus. Consistent with Bellingcat’s…
May 4, 2018
Written in cooperation with @SCW_Nuggie. Over the course of seven years of war, Syrian rebels have been fighting an army which once had the 6th largest number of tanks in the world. This article will detail the collection of footage of Syrian rebel anti-tank guided missile (ATGM) use and their impact on events during Syrian…
May 1, 2018
A previous report by Eliot Higgins summarized the evidence for at least two yellow gas cylinders being associated with the April 7, 2018 attacks in Douma, Syria. That report discusses the similarities to previous attacks in Syria known to have involved chlorine gas and mentions fatality counts reported from Douma ranging from 43 – 85+….
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