Black Sarin?

November 7, 2017
(incomplete)
edits Nov. 8, Aug. 5, 2018, 
big additions Aug. 22-24, 2019... 

With some if not all alleged sarin attacks in Syria, there's been a strange dark fluid  associated with it. From reports, it seems this is the sarin itself, splashing out of rockets and bombs delivered by Syrian government forces. Of course, pure, military-grade sarin is a colorless, odorless liquid, but this stuff is said to smell foul and appear black. That's now an accepted feature of "Assad's" sarin, as used in several attacks since 2013 that, on review, tend to be false-flag events launched by terrorists. French inteligence analysis of samples from Saraqeb, 4-29-2013 found the air-dropped hand-grenades contained sarin of only 60% purity. They don't mention a color, but witnesses there described a "horrible, suffocating smell." 

To start, there are 4 incidents I can list where possible black liquid sarin appears, and on review I may be able to add more. That's not many, but there have only been so many sarin attacks, and a few specifically don't seem to involve the kind of area-splashing that lets us see the color of it. Maybe in comparing this fluid as seen and reported there are clues, patterns, inconsistencies to discover.

Ateibah 3-19-2013

Adra 8-5-2013

Latamnah 3-30-2017

Khan Sheikhoun, 4-4-2017
(and added in 2019: other incidents from June and January of 2013)

Note: this black fluid aspect is something I've seen liot Higgins cover as a likely clue (see here for one example). I'm not sure it is, but there's enough of a case to assemble this post to lay it out and see.

Ateibah 3-19-2013:  a black fluid was said (not seen) to come out of a rocket, have a foul smell, and to cause direct health problems including lung damage. I don't know of any imagery from the site to support that, but given the following, it could be. It may not be what killed seven people. (ACLOS)

The area was under control of Saudi-backed  Jaish Al-Islam, who seem likely suspects in two even earlier alleged CW incidents in November, 2012, that killed one "displaced" child each. This Ateibah attack killed one displaced infant, and 5 civilian men, three of who seem to be from a Christian family, by their rare, Aramaic name. Also, the attack coincided with a sarin attack on Syrian soldioers and largely Shi'ite civilians in Aleppo, and apparently a planned CW attack in Homs cit that was barely reported then forgotten. It was a big day, March 19. There are clues that Jaish al-Islam's sponsors in Saudi Arabia ordered it up.

Adra 8-5-2013: In Adra, East Ghouta Damascus suburbs, a sain rocket attack was blamed for a plume said sicken hundreds, but to kill no humans (Eliot Higgins (Brown Moses) discusses it here). AN ITV News report (August 5, 10:43 PM) explains "Syrian rebel fighters have alleged that the Assad regime launched "a series of chemical attacks" on the Damascus suburbs of Adra and Douma yesterday morning. Residents reported that the attack took place during morning prayers yesterday, and approximately 400 people were showing "signs of exposure to chemical toxic gases." (Yesterday will be Syria time, hours ahead and already in "tomorrow.")

Adra is a large area, some of which was rebel-occupied at the time. Other parts were government-secured and sheltered many minorities, whom rebels murdered and abducted in a huge raid and massacre in December, 2013. Adra is next to Douma, and any "liberated" parts would be under control of the same Jaish Al-Islam mentioned above. They would lead the December massacre, who may have been behind the prior CW incidents mentioned above, and who may well have committed the Ghouta massacre a few weeks later. That incident would use several rockets of the kind that used for this prelude incident.

The alleged sarin apparently splashed all over a wet dog, who already appears abandoned and under-nourished. It's not clear of this fluid is black, at this relative thinness. It appears colorless, but... The poor creature starts  out still as their video begins, but quickly starts twitching and then in seconds, convulsing and kicking about as fast and violently as physically possible. It's quite hard to watch.  With the warning: Adra 5 8 2013 A rocket that was carrying chemical materials and shows around the animals died after the chemical. 

I've never seen any human victim convulsing remotely like this. The people filming it, breathing the same area (or are they wearing gas masks?) seem to be completely unaffected. That and the apparent sequence suggests the poison was splashed right on this dog well after any rocket impact, and just for this video. Possibly sarin but likely some other liquid nerve agent, it's quite deadly, like what they say came out of the rocket nearby, but here the guys with the cameras seem to have it to splash around at will. 

The video cuts at severe convulsion, perhaps before it got even uglier. Next we see after the animal is dead, and has been moved for some reason to a spot in the middle of an intersection (or it might be a different dog). The supposed sarin rocket laying there, as if just laid there, and a dead cat also laying nearby. The pavement is black here, if not wet-seeming (foreground: dead dog - left distance: a dead cat - left off-frame: the rocket). 

Looking the other way from over by the cat: the dog and the rocket over by the curb. 

The color enhanced composite view above shows that black has a blue-ish hue, but there are also patches with red, and areas where it mixes into purple ... in fact, a strange damage area (seems old, unrelated to the attack) seems to be the reddest. This is over by the dead cat. I don't know what to make of this.

 

Brown Mosess: "In the case of the 3 videos from Adra on August 5th, they are linked directly to an attack that took place on the same day, with videos of the victims of the attack showing the same kinds of symptoms.  I spoke to a doctor in Damascus who claims to have treated victims from both the August 21st attack and August 5th attack, and he claimed the symptoms where the same in both attacks."

One of his 3 videos is the one with the dog being poisoned. Per the other 2, there were apparently 3 or more rockets used, all of the same "volcano" or "UMLACA" style famously used for the Ghouta attack. The one next to the dog and cat seems pretty straight. Two others are badly bent: #138 and 15x (bad still for that - it's obviously 155 as shown here). Both shown on videos dated August 5, The bent portion of tube that's discolored: that will be inside the chemical tanks. One looks a bit like its stained by motor oil, something greasy and dark. The other looks sort of rusty. It may have landed similarly,  with this being the original down side. How it got what looks like drizzles of chocolate syrup is unclear, but might be the remaining fluid running down the sides and pooling along this bottom edge. A similar case of dark drizzle is examined in this Brown Moses post, that also shows a better view of the rocket by the dead dog: it has the same dark/greasy-looking metal as these in the same area, forward of the payload tank end-plate. As Higgins described it "the tube of metal where the payload would have been looks black and shiny, possibly covered in a black liquid." I tend to agree on that point.

Add 2019: greasy black pavement.

Ghouta 8-21-2013: not an example?

The Ghouta attack a few weeks later and not far away had an alleged 12 such rockets used, with at least 8 or 9 seen manged afterwards. These sites tend to have a clear blackening of the ground with each rocket hit. But it never looks wet, and usually appears scorched as if by fire (see right). A close-up on grass at one impact site is clear on that point (below). 

Besides at the famous field impact 1 (UN-OPCW visit) and 2 (rocket #197), similar burn rings can be seen with a rooftop where rocket landed, and there are circular scorch-marks near the pile of dead sheep and goats. It might even be part of why they're burnt and why some of them seem torn up. Whatever caused that fire, by the way, would destroy any sarin it might have carried. The damage and burn ring patterns suggest these were fuel-air explosive weapons, not sarin rockets. That's still a minority view but I hold to it. The fuel used in those - not sure, but it might be black and oily, like what the Adra rockets held. The Ghouta rockets and dirt tested positive for sarin days later, but that could be after it was splashed there, like it might have been splashed on that poor dog, by some well-connected Islamists from Douma. So this doesn't count. (So does Adra 8-5 count?)



So 2 possible cases in 2013, not so clear. Phase II in 2017, it's clearer. Is it new, or just newly seen?

Latamnah, 3-24-2017: (added 8-5-18) Only 15 months later did this event get mentioned anywhere. The next-day event had been reported as a chlorine attack, but in mid-2018 the OPCW revealed that samples in both cases showed sarin (report PDF link). On the 24th:
Casualties in the vicinity of the first impact point reported not smelling anything before the onset of symptoms. One witness who inspected the first crater described it as being about 1.5 meters in diameter by one meter in depth. Inside, there was a bubbling liquid and metal fragments. Another witness who saw the crater on the first day described the bubbling liquid as similar to water. Days later, the same crater was seen having a black bubbling liquid. According to both witnesses, a burning sensation on the skin was felt when approaching the crater and dead animals and burnt vegetation were found within 200 meters in the direction of the wind.

Latamnah 3-30-2017: When an alleged sarin bomb was dropped in a gully between orchards, some 170 militants and farm workers hanging out nearby claimed sarin exposure, but none died. The blamed device is an air-dropped bomb with some scraps left - one laying in the bomb crater has the same kind of filler cap seen on a scrap in the crater in Khan Sheikhoun days later. (ACLOS, Bellingcat) The alleged jet-dropped bomb caused vegetation to become strangely flattened and blackened over a wide area, but not seeming burnt - as if by a tsunami of black water that was flowing strongly to the north. (below: the area was also coated with dirt afterwards, apparently from a follow-up explosive bomb or shell) Any inherent hue to this black stuff refuses to pop out under enhancement. Below is just contrast-adjusted to clarify the scene.

Khan Sheikhoun, 4-4-2017:

After this alleged jet bombing with sarin killed nearly 100, there's a strange black fluid splash all around the supposed release. Here an enhanced view shows it has a blue-ish hue, like ink, here seeming blue green or cyan. These densest patches are along the south edge of the crater (note one small patch of the same blue on the other side, but mainly it's this thick only on the south side, extending south and southeast, or towards the camera). Here's an enhanced view from the other side. That long thin streak to the south was probably a fatter shape until someone apparently drove right through that spot.

Those blues spots here appear wet, meaning the sarin has not evaporated yet? That would mean it would still be drifting up in molecules - uite a few of them - into the air. But it might be light enough a paper mask and not staying long would suffice to not die. Some reporters and others who visited the site report falling ill. Is this blue stuff something else added later? No. Its splash pattern goes with the general black, with the same directions of greater spread, because it's all from inside the same rocket (see below).

Reporter and propagandist Hadi Abdullah filmed the area with a drone, providing a nice overview of the scene for a clearer than usual reading of the size and shape of this black splash. From an enhanced view, note the shape of the darkest patch around the crater; it extends most to the lower right and least the opposite way. The denser scatter of displaced road fill goes the same way, more or less to the southeast.

Below is a larger view, also enhanced. The broader dark patch extends much further south thatn north. The other directions are less clear: on the left, we can see where it's splashed across the concrete island at a certain angle, across both levels. From there, it's less clear. On the right it surely extends into the soil, perhaps making it look redder? It's hard to say how far it extends - it just doesn't show up as clearly as it does on the asphalt.

The longest direction of spread will be the direction of travel of the delivery device, if it were traveling. That's not clear yet - it could be from right up the highway, from a bit from the right of that or, more likely, a bit or two to the left (note again the darker patch around the crater).

The highway runs about 19 degrees N-NE on the compass, so the firing direction suggested for this sarin rocket is, basically, from the north. It was said to be a non-propelled gravity bomb that fell from a jet, but the radar shows the nearest jet was, at the best moment, about 4km to the south, passing on an east-west flight path. Even if it were possible for that bomb to drift so far on the wind before hitting, it clearly would come in with a northerly heading on a slant from the south. But all that black sarin clearly splashes in roughly the opposite direction. Huh.

In Review

(forthcoming)

2019 additions (August 22-24)

Among the sources I overlooked before is an old Brown Moses blog post by Eliot Higgins. Among his valuable work was collecting visual sources for the improvised rocket blamed for the Aug. 21, 2013 Ghouta chemical massacre. The mystery rocket he dubbed UMLACA and then Volcano was also "reportedly used by government forces in Daraya, Damascus in January, and in Adra, Damascus in June." In perhaps their first known appearances.

"Regular readers of the blog might recognise this device as resembling an unidentified rocket/missile I've written about recently, reportedly used by government forces in Daraya, Damascus in January, and in Adra, Damascus in June." There's also a use of the volcano in Homs mentioned, the only case of that I know of a "volcano" rocket seen outside the Damascus area, and intriguingly placed on the timeline. Let's consider this one first, briefly.

Homs, August 2, 2013: Higgins wrote "in addition to these images from Damascus we also have this video posted a few days ago from Khalidiya, Homs" - Aug 2 video, said to be full of explosives, bent tube, ruptured tank, but unexploded, intact. There's a pale yellow powder fill (his screen-grab - lower left is fill, above that peeled back metal, with more powder perhaps stuck to it?) that looks like high-explosives to Higgins. I'd credit that. He thinks it "didn't all explode." I propose it didn't explode at all, and the missing part is just from mechanical impact that deformed the tank holding it. That yellow stuff looks pretty similar to the smoldering pieces seen in Daraya on 4 January (see below), but it's not clear if that means anything. There's no black oily splash I can see, and no chemical incidents reported, and they claim it's explosives - in all ways, this is not a "black sarin" example - but worth mentioning, showing, but not dwelling on any longer.

Adra, 6-11-2013: First, the later incident more in line with the above cases: 11 June Liwa al-Islam video, said to be in Adra, as with the August incident. It's not clear if this was or was meant to be the same sarin-related black stuff. I know of no mentions of a chemical attack there at this time, but smaller ones were commonly claimed, mostly in a combat context, killing a couple "FSA" fighters here and there across E. Ghouta through mod-2013. Only a few non-fatal alleged incidents will have crossed my radar.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HylX8OiczHk
Islam Brigade (Liwa al-Islam), Junaa al-Tawhid Battalion remnants of the Katim rocket
Original title - لواء الإسلام كتيبة جند التوحيد بقايا الصاروخ الكيم
Original publishing date - June 11th 2013
Original description - None

Here we see no visible splash pattern, raising the question if this its original impact point. But still we see more greasy, dark residue on the rocket tube as seen on August 5, in the same area: what would have been inside the payload tank, whatever it was carrying. Some residue doesn't evaporate, pooled up enough on the underside to trickle when it's rolled over. Another view shows the black shiny character of the metal in the tank area. Higgins noted all these things, and I agree with on all these impressions. I just think it was some part of the Islam Brigade that was firing these things in the first place.

Daraya, 1-4-2013: First, a video of this event was re-posted by Higgins: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=68YeijuMHec "Important flash one of the rockets that landed this night Daria." Posted 4 January. No fighting group is specified here, but the shared technology (that they claim to be targeted with) suggest an alliance with Jaish al-Islam in Eastern Ghouta, or perhaps its own fighters (I hear they have had a direct presence, not clear when). This shows impact in wet mud that's extra yellow, at least near the rocket. A wide arc around the impact has soil seeming soaked in a black liquid like we've been considering. A very wide area, like a mile off to the right, it seems, is darker than that next to it, maybe for other reasons. Just a narrower arc closer in has a definite black oily character. This should be out ahead of impact normally (in direction of travel), but it looks to be behind it, from how the tailfin points. But in fact, the heavy tail assembly on these flimsy tubes often bend forward after impact. I don't see a bend, but it's probably there way under the mud.

...

That video is filmed in full daylight, likely morning; the rocket is said to have landed this night, overnight, hours ago. But as the video starts near the rocket, at about 0:16 we see faint yellow smoke, rising off the impact area, then thicker, continuing with variances from the breeze, to late in the 1:25 video, which might stop because the smoke seemed to be winding down. The source is apparently from the irregular yellow fragments of various sizes, some pretty large, that otherwise look like part of the impacted soil.

It's possible they were still smoldering from a very slow post-impact process, and the smoke was just invisible for the first seconds because of the breeze. But to me, this yellow stuff seems manufactured for the video. Perhaps something was added to the scene to start a new chemical reaction there? Some dilute acid drizzled on right before he pressed record? It doesn't seem to be very toxic; I'm not sure if the camera operator is wearing a gas mask, but he walks right through the smoke with no sign of worry.

In addition to this scene, Higgins was sent two photographs of another volcano rocket that landed in Daraya the same day, January 4. These show blacktop pavement impacted non-explosively, with a mostly intact rocket lodged in its impact crater, the side-slats of the payload tank peeled back but still connected. There's a serious splash of black liquid on the wall and across the pavement, reflectively wet in spots. Yellow smoke like that seen in the street impact, but even thicker, actively pours out of the crater. Perhaps the same method as the other video, with the yellow chunks invisible down there?

2020 Add: the pavement impact scene is from earlier - on or before 26 December - at most 4 days after the alleged fatal attack on soldiers on 22 December. Bellingcat's early article Volcanoes in Damascus, July 15, 2014
https://www.bellingcat.com/resources/case-studies/2014/07/15/volcanoes-in-damascus/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eYq9p2Ojhgs
داريا خطير - صواريخ نظام الأسد التي تقصف بها المدينة
Darya Danger - Assad regime's missiles bombing the city
uploaded by المجلس المحلي داريّا
Daraya Local Council

We haven't seen a lot of cases, but enough that it might matter this smoldering impact is never seen except in both of these cases on Jan. 4 in Daraya. Is that just the luck of the available views? Or do the chemical volcano rockets only do this in Daraya? It might have been a local specialty in those days; Daraya was also home of this purple smoke bomb blamed for the Dec. 5/6 chemical attack.

The Daraya appearances are important for location and timing.

Location: As partly noted, this is perhaps the only appearance in Daraya, western Ghouta, generally cut-off from Eastern Ghouta, where these appear otherwise. Douma-based Liwa al-Islam seem to be the weapon's usual controllers. LaI may have had a direct presence around Daraya at times. Otherwise perhaps allies had them too - Jabhat al-Nusra springs to mind. They're seen nowhere else in Syria that I know of - and there's a fair amount I don't know of, or knew but forgot - aside from the one sighting in Homs.

Despite the separation, E+W Ghouta terrorists seem to have worked together on the 21 August chemical massacre, though apparently using They agreed on gassing hostages en masse, with LaI providing unclear several hundreds, and whoever exactly in Moadamiya scraped up less than a single hundred. They'd like to use the same weapon to underline the Assad blame and centralized plan, if they could. But different weapons were used - volcanos in the east, some mortar shells in the west, where they apparently didn't have any more volcanos to use. Because this teamwork goes back just as far as this first volcano sighting; the first deadly attacks to emerge in Nov-Dec 2012 happened in what seems like agreed shifts - one attack per week (6-day spans, actually), two near Douma in E. Ghouta, then 2 in W. Ghouta in the weeks before the Jan. 4 volcano impacts there.

Timing: this is by far the earliest appearance of this weapon (AFAIK), besides the only one in its area. There were no toxic gas attack reported at the time I know of, but shortly before this day, in fact ... the second half of those late-2012 CW incidents were in Moadamiya (next to Daraya) around Nov. 28/29, then in Daraya on Dec. 5/6. For what it's worth, one or two of the 4 men killed in the Moadamiya event, and the washroom, appear to be coated and smeared with some kind of black fluid, raising the possibility of an unusual sort of black sarin inclusion. ( incident post) The Dec. 6 reports may link to Dec. 5 video of toxic smoke that's obviously a fake purple smoke bomb or the like, as noted above, and may also to a strangely killed baby they never finished linking (instead, asphyxiated by random smoke from regular shelling). Otherwise, we'd say no fatalities that week, just vague reports and the fake video. ( incident post)

So that 4-attack pattern closed in Daraya on Dec. 6. Then, perhaps unplanned, another incident unfolded there 2 weeks later. On 22 December, 2012, reports emerged of Syrian troops confronting armed "terrorist" groups in or near Daraya being hit with a shell that released a mysterious yellow smoke, effecting many conscripts and causing seven to die in under an hour. If true, that would suggest sarin, which as used in Syria is yellow in color. But it's more of a mist than a smoke... ( incident post shared w/Dec. 6) The reality and full details of this incident (like the weapon used) remain unclear after all this time, but here in Daraya again, another 2 weeks later, they have these rockets landing with black splashes and pouring yellow smoke in a manner not seen elsewhere. If we consider something yellow and real killed Syrian troops, and this yellow smoke were faked ... that could be a coincidence, or maybe their explanation how yellow smoke rockets come from the regime, including these two, probably the one they hit themselves with in December (in case that story sticks - they couldn't know for sure). These views could "show" how that smoke is not fatal, so any soldiers killed in that staged event, well ... surely a conspiracy with Iranians involved. "Defectors" on hand can know all about it on command, etc. (hypothetically - I don't know of such a story being phoned in).

Regardless of that speculation, we have a rater interesting pattern of clues here that seem worth considering in the evolution of the sarin narrative in Syria. These black splashes and volcano rocket link run back at least this close, in time and space, to 12-22-2012, what could be the deadliest sarin attack until the more well-known March, 2013 attack on Khan al-Assal, Aleppo. Apparently launched by Jabhat al-Nusra with a different, smaller and locally made rocket, again targeting SAA troops, sickening many and killing at least one, besides 20-25 mainly civilians killed.