More Clues from Douma's Location 2

Douma Chemical Massacre: Victims Analysis: More Clues from Douma's Location 2

November 18, 2021

(incomplete)

We'll start with two newly published videos of the 2018 Douma chemical massacre, but both describing the 2013 Ghouta chemical massacre, and released on or near that anniversary. 

Aug 21, Youtube, 6:27: فيديو يعرض لاول مرة عن مجزرة الكيماوي في الغوطة كي لا ننسى جرائم هذا النظام المجرم - YouTube ("A video showing for the first time about the chemical massacre in Ghouta so that we do not forget the crimes of this criminal regime" - next is an answer to getting them mixed-up) posted by يا طوبى للشام ( O Blessed is the Sham (Syria) ) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=INlUB2A9Jz0

Aug. 23, Twitter, 0:45: M HABIB on Twitter: "Le massacre de la Ghouta Nouvelle vidéo, nouveau document poignant sur les victimes du bombardement au gaz sarin par le régime syrien à Ghouta https://t.co/oG3qfQIryj" / Twitter

They both show the pivotal "Location 2" with reported 35 fatalities. The shorter video appears nowhere else I've seen, but the long one was reposted many times on Facebook, including by "expatriate obsessions" ( هواجيس مغتربا ) and on the page friends of France 24 in Arabic, where Abu Firas Homsi blamed "Bashar Al-Buhrzi" (? = بشار البهرزي ) plus "the Persians" "the criminal Putin" and declares France 24 and the West at large "are the one who helped Iran" to make Sham (Syria), Iraq and Lebanon into "Iranian provinces," besides facilitating the chemical attack shown: "On this day ... Ten years ago (Aug. 21, 2011 ... 2 years earlier than most realize!)... the Syrian regime targeted the cities of "Zamalka, Ain Tarma, Harasta and Douma" in Eastern Ghouta and Muadamiyat al-Sham in Western Ghouta" with sarin, killing 1,461 people and causing "the injury of 9,757 people, according to Syrian Network for Human Rights." 

A 2019 report gives those numbers for all the government's alleged CW attacks combined. (Accountability Remains Absent on the Sixth Anniversary of the World’s Largest Chemical Weapons Attack Since the Chemical Weapons Convention | Syrian Network for Human Rights (sn4hr.org) (a 2020 update gives 11,212 injured, 1,510 killed in all combined) 

And BTW note how that also gives as among the dead seven "Syrian regime prisoners of war" (or "prisoners of the regime" in the report) held by the local "opposition" occupying Adra Omaliya, on September 24, 2014. It would be the deadliest alleged chlorine attack until 2018 (otherwise the maximum was six killed at once). Videos, opposition records, and timing show these were captured civilians including a father and son - never described as criminals but "prisoners of war" ... and plunder, and kidnapping. Three of these are shown dead on video - one old, one ill, one previously injured. It seems they were low-value prison-laborers killed somehow before militants fled the area the following day with all valuable possessions - like useful civilian prisoners. They're seen with bleeding holes in the left (heart) sides of their chests, and no sign of chlorine exposure (like the expected red eyes). See here.

Okay - this network of SNHR-citing and especially clueless Shami activists is interesting in itself. But the videos offer a few new details I'll focus on here, mainly sharing a revamped map of Location 2. My prior mapping was never remotely accurate, just enough to show what rooms bodies were found in ... trying to account for bodies and objects even in rooms without bodies and having more such rooms to correlate makes it start to make better, if still imperfect, sense ... I may update that with the more accurate layout.

My initial tweet on the short video's tour of floor 3 included this map, to be revised below: 

Andrew comments alerting to the longer video also noted "some kind of stretcher?" jammed into one of the doorways is probably a step ladder. I agreed with some embarrassment, and noted ( tweet 2 ) it would be about this size - modeled beneath the cylinder in the ceiling just around the corner (see improved floor 3 mapping below). That might be a simple coincidence, of course. But it might be a more relevant type of coincidence.

Timeline 

Qoppa comments on the first-discussed shorter video: "Do we hear bombing in the background (00:35, 00:40)? That would point to a time rather in the morning when bombing resumed." (Syrian Air Force generally operates only in daylight). It sounds like that to me. In fact I hear distant blasts in the first 5 seconds, closer at 0:13, closer yet at 0:19, then a short pause and more over the last seconds. That's rather active bombing - nearly constant (noting insurgent surrender was finalized after just a few hours of this final assault of April 8). By that measure, the longer video may be earlier; it's all quiet outside until 2:25, when we hear a single blast nearby, then nothing clear until a distant blast at 4:31, closer at 4:35, then more at 5:08, 5:30, 5:54, 6:00, 6:06 and 6:22. Video ends 6:27, probably just before proper sunrise. 

Furthermore: The longer video shows G10 in purple is in the later position atop the pile of bodies on the ground floor main room. So this is after the initial 10PM videos when she was in the kitchen area, and after ~1am when she was seen being moved by a White Helmet's "rescuer." But it's not so late that we see daylight inside, and early enough that G7 and G9 are still present (they're the first removed - see here).

More dead girl rearrangement: G1 at the top of the stairs is seen in both new videos in a different position than before. First seen on the landing between floors 2 and 3, she's now moved 1/2 flight of stairs down, next to G2 right above floor 2. (left: shot video. Right: long video - G1 in red, G2 stripes). For now skipping the issues of blood, causes, other positions (see if needed discussion w/Qoppa under my tweet).

These 2 with a dirty cloth nearby always seemed to be the ones described here: "By his third frantic dash down the stairs, with a wet piece of cloth over his mouth and a little girl in each arm, everything went dark for Khaled Abu Jaafar." (Al-Jazeera) He would have dropped them near each other, and then been rescued himself. This arrangement we've never seen fits that even better, side-by-side as if they were one under each of a man's arms. Did he come in after the 10PM video where recue already seemed a moot point, pick up the already dead G1 and then dashed down to just pick up G2 and pass out instantly, dropping them so G1 seems totally unmoved?  No. It seems like he just tailored his story of "frantic" rescue to this later scene. Oops. But we can guess he was there and saw this, and didn't fit his story to the (then) published videos.

More clues in the mapping

Mapping floors 1, 2 and 3 with images mainly from the new videos (others of importance added from prior images too). Labeling doors at each floor by letters, right-to-left. Seems like 2 apartments per floor, with 2C being sort of a back door to what I'll call apartment 2B. Bodies were found in apartments 1A and 2B, besides the stairwell and outside. Other clues as they come up.

First the basement, as previously mapped here - no bodies were found here, but it's said the residents were all sheltering here to start. Most shoes are seen here, and note that's plausible; shoes off at home is normal, even if it's a temporary shelter home. They might put them back on to assist in fleeing deadly gas, but who can say for sure?

Then upon smelling the descending caustic gas, they all fled upstairs - passing an open entrance right onto the street and fresher air, returning to the supposedly gas-filled ground floor and up to the 2nd floor, through any open door desperately seeking water to wash their faces, then piling up there with wet faces, not paralyzed and remaining conscious, to slowly die. They would have to take some doors off the hinges to do this, drag themselves on rugs, and somehow managed to do it without their feet touching the dusty floor of this seemingly abandoned building. 

Floor 1 (top middle images go with apartment 1A, green dot room):

The green dot room with the lone boy victim B6 was mysterious; it seemed too small to have its own north window, yet was fully lit in the morning. Apparently that's a door with a window all up the middle: it reflects the camera's light at night, at the same level the door frame reflects it, and allows the sun later.

Again, I've noted by the shower a discarded respirator (for moderate exposure to noxious gasses/fumes), dirty, damp rags, a wet, muddy floor, and noting more than before a pail seeming full of yellow-brown water ... mostly re-collected after the mysterious washing of faces and hair? Red smears on the front, or lettering? Red smears all over the sink's underside? Is that all rust stains? Did they wipe a lot of blood off someone? B3 nearby and some others were leaking edema fluids with high blood content. But mainly they exude a yellow-brown liquid, variously seen foamed up or dissolved to liquid.

The longer new video offers a new view inside in apartment 1B. Yellow-brown liquid at the entrance to the red dot room suggests someone may have been briefly planted there, leaking the usual mystery fluids, and was then moved - probably to be among those we've already seen. The fluid seems to smear around the door's corner to the couch (and that  may have been moved later to partly cover the spot), and was copious enough it then flowed back up the hall (part marked lime green). 

Buckets in the wash room across the hall were possibly used for victim washup as seen by the others, maybe causing the amount of fluid we see. There's an unusual pair of discarded shoes where no one was allegedly sheltering, and a yellow spot on the rug that's probably some clothing item (head scarf?), not a mass of that liquid (too discrete and brightly-colored)

Floor 2: 

Behind door 2C (apartment 2B's bedroom), I had noted an unclear body #6 looking like a woman in black - with better views now, that looks more like black clothing (green box). The staining along the edge, however, could mean someone was there (still is, unseen?). The supposed 35th body here remains unseen - or unborn? W5 was very pregnant. Maybe that's what they meant. 

2A is another door off its hinges, mostly unseen behind a red curtain. It's left in place at the base, but angled back against the wall inside. Inside, an area to the left is seen, with a shower and sink, two rooms with slight glimpses inside. One has a yellow object similar to the chlorine gas cylinder seen at ceiling level of the floor above this, but shorter or of an unclear overall size - just marked for reference and discussion.  

Floor 3:

... interesting new bits partly noted above. Maybe more soon.

Noting: 10PM video - only prior view of floor 3 - is totally unclear as to whether there's a stepladder in that doorway then or only later.