Syria: Crushed Women in Rastan

Syria: Crushed Women in Rastan

On August 28, the Syrian Network For Human Rights reported: at least 2 women died in government warplanes missiles fired on Al Rastan city in Homs governorate, August 28, 2016.
الشبكة السورية: سيدتان على الأقل، توفيتا جراء قصف الطيران الحربي الحكومي بالصواريخ مدينة الرستن بمحافظة حمص، في 28 آب 2016

No further details. One woman is shown in a photo, sort of crushed and rolled to the edge as two concrete slabs came together in a building collapse. Presumably, the story is she was living there, as the dishes suggest, and when it was bombed, everything just came out like this. She might have been living alone and/or "in sin" to some - no dead husband mentioned, and look at those modern, tight pants, with spangles. She wasn't a real salafist, apparently. And that bright pink head-scarf ... or is it red and white pin-stripes? Or tie-died?

Looking closer ... beneath her head scarf is a large head wound we can only see part of. It seems fatal, and to be done while the scarf wasn't on - the fabric doesn't seem torn like her head is. And the color issue is all white cloth plus blood.

It's possible this is all from the jumbling violence where some reinforcing bar pierced her skull while the scarf was pulled back, and then later the it slid back to partly cover the wound. But it's also possible she was shot or stabbed in the head, had that wrapped up with a new headscarf, and her body was placed in some abandoned building - probably with its walls already gone. It might be arrayed with some dishes, all visibly along the edge, before the structure was collapsed on her body as a propaganda stunt. 

I think that's quite likely what happened; they just planted the body of someone they killed, because they're terrorist assholes. They figured it would all come out looking close enough. 

In case we get an alleged attack time here, note: photo is mid-morning (could be measured for solar elevation). Most blood is dry, but there was a lot, and the thickest of it is still tacky. The possibly blood-smeared object to the right is of some interest.  I don't know what that it - some kind of mattress?

Who was she? SNHR had said "at least two women" killed, suggesting both more people and more women were possibly killed.  VDC query: all civilians from Rastan killed Aug. 28 = 1: Ayda Hamdan, adult female, married, killed by warplane shelling, and no further details. The entry includes this "generic video" of others being treated in a clinic in Rastan for genuine-seeming but light injuries. There's no second Rastan woman. 

But there's supposed to be another woman.... VDC shows a total of three women from Homs province dying this day. And this same Rastan video is attached to one of those, from Der Baalba, (northern Homs city), killed the same way. One could presumes she died in Der Baalba, but warplanes don't shell there much. Was she displaced somehow, to Rastan, to then die along with this other woman? VDC query: all Der Baalba deaths on 8-28 = 3. That woman, and the other Homs woman, and her husband.

So that's presumably one of these three women we see squished here.

The married couple share the same family name al-Merei ( المرعي ) - suggesting not very traditional Islamic people. Women usually keep their fathers' names if devout Muslims, so the father and the children have one family name, and the mother has another. These kind of "Western-style," all-one-name families fare poorly for things like getting displaced within rebel-held areas, and then dying elsewhere under alleged Assad bombs in the kind of ignored, daily mini-massacres that really add up over years. See also Hayan Missile Massacre recently, near Aleppo: 2-3 wives with the same name (Qraitem) as 5-8 kids killed alongside them, and same as 3 men killed all at once two weeks earlier (all sorting and killing was, of course by regime aircraft...).

In this case, however, the man and woman are listed together, not separated like usual. Any children, however, seem separated and not dead. They're supposed to be spared, and can be re-educated. Also, I checked the name Marei, and it doesn't have much of a clear pattern - no recent child deaths, one man from Halfaya the next day, one man each from Aleppo and from Rastan  and one that's a "FSA" rebel, in the preceding weeks, etc.

But back to the Hayan case - that connected by one Qraitem man and many from another family killed earlier, in a June 4 barrel bomb attack with a boy somehow crushed between a concrete slab and a section of demolition chute. How that could happen is unclear, but some turned the photo upside-down to claim he was crushed by an un-exploded barrel bomb!

Below: Grisly pic, taken from here and turned right-side-up, and grisly notes:

Note, blood clearly drips down. But not much of it. He was probably dead well before the slab came down. Someone laid his body across the chute, after the massive wound across his upper face wasn't even bleeding any longer. Only when the slab came down was a little thick blood up in his sinuses jarred loose  to make this splatter.

Turning horribly-executed women and children into more victims of "Assad's" bombing ... it's that easy, or usually, even easier. In fact, this is one of the more elaborate methods I've seen.