Bellingcat exchanged information with Forensic Architecture and Human Rights Watch. Both of which carried out separate investigations into the attack. All multimedia information has been archived by the Syrian Archive. On March 16, 2017, around 18:55 local time, a United States (US) airstrike targeted the Sayidina Omar ibn al-Khattab mosque, where reportedly almost 300 people…
From eastern Aleppo to Raqqa to Mosul, the Islamic State (IS) appears to be losing ground on all sides in recent months. The same pattern holds true in southeastern Syria, a region that stretches from the Jordanian border to the city of Palmyra to the Euphrates river and only rarely features in reporting on the…
Part I: The Bomb, its contents, and their likely fate The recent chemical attack in Khan Shaykhun in Syria is alleged by witnesses to have been delivered by an air-dropped bomb. The purpose of this article is to systematically break down a Sarin bomb into its components and analyse what happens to them. This first part…
Last week, we published a survey of open source evidence concerning the alleged chemical attack at Khan Sheikhoun in Syria’s Idlib province. This article builds upon the information presented in that article by comparing the claims made by a variety of actors and sources, including the Pentagon, the Syrian Foreign Ministry, and aircraft spotters on the…
On Tuesday April 4th 2017, videos and images emerged from sources within Syria showing what is claimed to be a chemical weapon attack that targeted Al Sheikhun south of Idlib. Introduction Initial reports of the attack appeared on social media on the morning of Tuesday April 4th 2017. It was claimed that airstrikes in Khan Sheikhoun, Idlib,…
In response to allegations of a chemical attack in Khan Sheikhoun on April 4th 2017 the Russian Ministry of Defence made a statement where it claimed a warehouse containing chemical agents was hit in the same town as the attacks were reported to have occurred: The Syrian Air Force has destroyed a warehouse in Idlib…
On 28 March 2017 the Syrian Archive published a new report, Eyes on Aleppo: Visual evidence analysis of human rights violations committed in Aleppo [July – Dec 2016]. The report describes and investigates a new visual evidence dataset of 1748 videos of human rights violations in Aleppo city and the surrounding suburbs during the period…
This is a developing investigation, which will be updated as soon as there are new findings. We are currently waiting for a reaction from CENTCOM and the Pentagon with regards to our findings. Last update: March 18, 2017, 19:41 UTC. This is an investigation into the bombing by the United States (US) of a mosque…
On January 31, footage emerged from sources within Syria showing what is claimed to be a chemical weapon attack in the countryside of Damascus. This article will use open source analysis techniques to examine the footage and judge its veracity. Incident 1: Al-Marj, Damascus countryside Date: 30/01/2017 Reported casualties: No Information Injured: 11 (3 of them…
The Turkish military operation dubbed ‘Euphrates Shield’ (ES) began on August 24, 2016, aiming to clear an area of 5,000 square kilometres of Syrian territory, and is conducted jointly with Syrian rebel factions of the Free Syrian Army (FSA). Within four months, over 2,000 square kilometres were captured from so-called Islamic State (IS) and Kurdish…
