Wall 3 Impact

Ghouta Firing Directions: Wall 3 Impact

October 23, 2021

We still haven't placed the Al-Jazeera impact I call "remote corner" but a 11th likely impact is identified and now makes for 10 that are geolocated. As with the recently placed road impact, this comes from an obscure video posted by Knights of Ghouta ( فرسان الغوطة ) a week after the attack (August 27, 2013): "The chemical massacre, Eastern Ghouta, an eyewitness to the massacre" 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LSVFE0Xzdog

As for what the "eyewitness" says, see below. He could be lying, but the camera probably isn't, and we'll focus on what that says. The spot was specific enough, especially with a note of basic directions; sunlight shines mainly towards us, and just a bit from the left (besides from above) - that says we must be facing partly south, not at solar noon but close to midday judging from the short shadows. 

I was looking for a long wall running kind of east-west by a dirt mound, but the best fit had a bit different rotation than I expected (facing more west, with the wall closer to north-south) but it also fits with a video taken later in the afternoon than I thought and has all the distinct features: a very long wall enclosing an empty field, intact where it parallels with (is shored up by?) a big earthen mound, then collapsed for a long span to the right of that. A smaller tree is visible near the mound, and the overhead leaves show we're at a larger tree near the suggested impact spot. There are also five trees at certain points along the wall, and a few others in relation to some buildings across the field - one long block of buildings, and another building with a low walled-area is partly visible across a gap. Within or lining up with that gap: 2 larger trees, a collapsed building, and even bigger tree and larger building in the distance.  

All that was found at: 33°31'34"N 36°21'45"E. The spot at normal map rotation, approximate crater and point of view marked with a red dot, near the base of a large tree with another tree and huge dirt mound to the south. Direction of view then is southwest, through the big gap in the wall, which casts a shadow only as far as the mound.

It's possible the same details all appear in another spot that's the actual impact, but it seems pretty unlikely. This placement isn't 100% sure, but ... on review, it rounds up to that. See all matched details and note two taller trees on the right fail to appear, and they would be just off frame from everything else (field of view marked in light blue). 

Here's a bigger view of just the coded items on the satellite view.

The walled area marked in pink on the right may have no north wall so it's not clear if that's the south wall or what. Historical images show this used to be a swimming pool here (hence the extra-deep shadows). We may see a curved handlebar for that (red box), relation to unclear wall/surface unclear. The whole walled area was attached to this home, had walls on all 3 sides, and was filled with trees. Plenty of privacy back then. Nice place. Later the trees mostly went away, the pool dried up, the resident went somewhere.

This is quite close to Syrian Archive's spot #3 (see map below, upper right corner), as given in a video last year. That was likely meant to correlate with one of the two nearby dots for LCC, HRW - probably HRW 9, as the other (LCC10, HRW12) seems to go with wall 2. If indeed this is the spot they meant by SA3, it has some question marks over it. Most updated impacts map:

The identified launch spot - PLI Field as I call it, where Liwa Islam (possibly) was seen firing these very rockets - is 2.03km distant, bearing 289.6 degrees. That equates with a trajectory about 109-110 to bring it here. It might deflect a bit at wall impact, and might have its range limited by the taller building marked in 3D here (or not, depending on altitude by then). We've seen firing at 110 degrees, and seen another rocket - the one we can't place - read at 110. If that's correct, the two should be on about the same line ... but we've been looking on that line among others and still haven't found that spot. 

It seems odd that a non-explosive rocket would knock down all that wall, but other impact scenes look odd in an explosive or fuel-air explosive way. The rubble came down to the east, and seems worst at a certain point (wall base extra disrupted) and the rubble spreads farther, on a line towards this crater. So I marked that in red above as the apparent ground track. 

THEN I re-checked the Google Earth historical imagery and see this wall is down before January, 2013. Below is Sept., 2012 with wall intact. In Jan. and Feb. images its shadow stops just past the mound as it does in August (left to right), and the strip along it is the same gray that whole time, just a little cleaned up by August. Before that, the area was all yellow soil lined by an intact wall. 

And there were still a lot of trees then in 2012, not so many in January or after (noting some trees can be invisible from space in the winter without the foliage, they don't even come back into view August). Some apparent blackening also seems to appear in the area of the apparent late-2012 blast inside the walls and maybe outside. That may be the "possible black splash" noted around the impact crater. And what looks like an extra-sharp crater is there in January. But then a large invisible tree has its trunk right about there there, and it and a smaller one to the left have invisible branches that might be visible as a darker smudge.

Still that damage seems to point about to this crater, so ... are they passing off some old rocket impact? If so, an angle more from the west seems a better explanation than 210 anyways, though it is uncannily similar. And the range is perfect for a Volcano from PLI field. Did this happen to fly 2.03 km at 109.6 from that field, which does fit pretty well, and it just happened to coincide so well with the existing damage? Or more likely was it planned to match, as some kind of joke or to send some message? Or am I missing something?

Video: eyewitness account (translated by Amin25)

Dear brother only poor people, and those who can not leave,  live in this area. We woke up this morning, I tell you 3000 people are gone. They did not spare the animals the  cats or dogs everything we found out on the ground. 

Yesterday, as the other brother said, the decomposed bodies of 8 men were extracted.  Until this hour  people are still digging other people out,  people are still missing, buried, their fate is unknown. 

My dear brother the situation is deplorable. I usually come here to check on my neighbor, my relatives, today there is no one to be found as you can see. I met you by chance. 

Comments: "3,000 people are gone." That sounds like 3,000 dead, to the 1,700 max. otherwise reported. Maybe his own estimate, as he says many are still just missing. The bodies of 8 men were found yesterday - not the family of 8-9, mostly children, found 5 days earlier, but clearly executed prior to the chemical attack? There has been maybe zero documentation of bodies found where they fell. He has claims that it happened. He's able to verify a neighbor he knows and his relatives are among the dead, or they're not here now all of a sudden. He found a possible rocket impact spot, stands next to it like it's significant, like it wasn't there before - but all the damage that seems related had been that way all year. "I met you by chance" but he knows what the "other brother" told him yesterday - maybe following on some discussion?