A Russian War on Ukrainian Civilians?

March 16, 2025

(rough, incomplete)

As a 2023 Human Right Watch report put it, "Russia unleashed a full-scale invasion, bringing death and suffering to millions of Ukrainian civilians" with its invasion of Ukraine the previous year. Since then, it says, "Russian forces have killed, raped, tortured, deported, or forcibly transferred civilians to Russia or Russian-occupied areas."  

In this article, we'll consider only the "killed" part, with an emphasis on civilians. I'm not as focused on injuries, important and terrible as they can be, but broadly speaking, the pattern I see (at least for civilians) is close to 2 injured for every fatality. So multiplying any deaths total by 3 should give you an idea of total casualties including wounded.

Following Russia's 2022 invasion, estimates of civilian deaths very widely between 12,600 (verified minimum from a recent OHCHR report) and, by tallying regional totals from Wikipedia, between 20,000 and 35,000, with Mariupol being the biggest variable (estimates there range from 10-20,000 in most sources, with over 25,000 killed per this list, citing other credible media reports).

Military losses, estimates, per https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Russo-Ukrainian_War 

Ukrainian Forces: 60,000-120,000 killed

Russian forces: 167,000-234,700 killed. 

Peoples' Republics forces (Russian-supported separatists): 21,000-23,500

Total military deaths since 2022: 260,000-413,200

So comparing 12.6k-35k civilians to the above, we get a death ratio somewhere between 0.03 civilians for each militant (0.03:1 or 3:100) to 0.14 civilians per (0.14:1 / 14/100). As we'll see, either number is remarkably low by world standards. 

Now let's consider the war's first phase, before Russia undeniably entered the field, the 2014-2019 "Anti-Terror Operation" in the Donbas and the 2015-2021"ceasefires" period following the Mink Accords (note the years of crossover) 

Estimated total killed: 14,000-14,300 

- 6,500 fighters of the Donetsk and Lugansk Peoples' Republics 

- 4,400 Ukrainian fighters, 

- 3,100-3,400 civilians 

(3100-3400) civilian deaths vs. 10,900 military ones = 0.3 civilians for each militant. That's 2-10x as bad as during Russia's invasion. And as I'll explain below, that's probably >80% killed by Ukraine.

Some prior estimates of civ:mil death ratios in select conflicts, all of them outside Europe, suggests a global double-standard (citing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civilian_casualty_ratio):

US -> Korea 3:1

US -> Vietnam 2:1

US -> Iraq: 3:1 down to 0.5:1 (counts vary widely)

US -> Afghanistan: 0.4:1 (may be higher) 

Israel -> Lebanon 1982: 4:1 or even 6:1

Gaza 2023-now: Probably at least 4:1 (counts vary widely)

Even Ukraine's brutal attacks on the Donbas (see below) yield a better rate than any of these, at 0.3 civilians for each militant, with the separatist side causing some of the deaths. Russia's invasion and Ukraine's response cuts the civilian deaths in half, to 0.14:1 or even lower.  And even of this small number, Ukraine contributes much of it - and probably most of it, directly with ongoing shelling of the Donbass, and indirectly as in occupied Mariupol. 

As I see it from middling study (on average - high in spots, low in others), there are 5 sets of circumstances allowing for some Ukrainian hand in killing civilians, even or especially where the Russians had invaded and were doing their own killing: 

1) Russian-occupied Donbass, Crimea, etc.: ethnic Russian in Russian-occupied lands killed in Ukrainian shelling, bombing & missile attacks. See below for some highlights of the first 8 months of the "Anti-Terror Operation" in 2014. This eventually mellowed, but the same kind of scale returned in 2022. 

2) Ukraine-occupied Donbass (occupied ethnic Russians, expendable in some minds = human shields, especially when the Russians are close to liberating an area) - est. 2,958 killed since 2022 in Donetsk oblast, both sides included, but excluding Mariupol and Volnovakha (Ukrainian occupied)

3) Mariupol (same as above but in a major, coastal, strategic city that served as the capitol of occupied Donetsk - Mariupol wound up flattened and massacred as a severe example - an area I studied in some detail: https://libyancivilwar.blogspot.com/2022/03/who-is-really-flattening-mariupol.html and should revisit, considering it may account for 10,000 to 25,000 or around 50-70% of all civilian deaths. Mainly, Ukraine weaponized the city to kill Russians, firing from every building, getting them wrecked in response, with little or even negative regard to civilian harm. My research suggests the Azov Brigade, not the Russians, blew up the drama theater on March 16, killing perhaps just a few dozen people they chose not to evacuate, for their own murky reasons, rather than the 1,200 widely reported. The very high counts might include this bigger number and might thus inflate the death toll there. Monitor on Massacre Marketing: Mariupol Theater Bombing, 3/16/2022

4) Bucha circumstances / parts of Kyiv Oblast were the 2nd deadliest after Donetsk, 1,569 civilians killed - occupied by Russia but partly sympathetic - massive violence used, killing innocents with heavy shelling, with likely execution of suspected collaborators after liberation -Many posts here: https://libyancivilwar.blogspot.com/search/label/Bucha%20Massacre - ignore all purple-shaded maps - another important issue to revisit. It was a mixed bag, with some definite Russian crimes, like executing 7 captive TDF fighters and the man sheltering them, and other brutality, if it often seems accidental.

5 The rest that was briefly occupied by Russia but I know less about (maybe like Bucha but varied, usually less severe?)

In Kyiv, there were only some 200 deaths total, probably most of these from missiles Ukraine shot down over the city to prevent another hit to their soldiers. This isn't a major factor, and it applies on the other side as well. One of the deadliest attack on Donetsk, on March 14, 2022, saw 23 civilians killed in a single, unusual attack with a Tochka-U missile and cluster bomblets, after it was shot down by DPR forces right over downtown, complicating the blame for what happened.

More Deaths on the Russian Side

"On 17 February 2023, the Ukrainian prosecutor general announced that at least 461 children had been killed since the start of the invasion, with a further 923 wounded.[153] Most of these child victims were from the Donetsk region.[153]"

"Russia does not allow monitoring in territories it controls, where civilian deaths are thought to be highest." 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Russo-Ukrainian_War

May 28, 2024: 282 children have been killed and 733 injured, just in the DPR, over the full 10 years of the conflict. It would be higher if many of children and young mothers had not been moved further back or even to Russia for their safety. (TASS)

Most civilian casualties - 85-90% - between 2014 and 2016 were from "indiscriminate shelling of residential areas," an OHCHR report found, but this is not broken down into deaths on each side.  

From 2017-2020 OSCE found 2.4 shelling casualties (injured or killed) in the PRs for every one on the other side. (657 vs.270). Just Donetsk: 513 vs. 223. Just Lugansk: 144 vs. 47. (OSCE report) From 2018-2021 A UN study found FIVE shelling casualties in the PRs for each one on the other side. (310 vs. 62). (UN report) There's an argument that the OSCE routinely undercounted attacks and casualties, especially in the PRs, to the tune of about half of them missed. (Donbass Insider) That's supported by the above (2.4 vs. 5), and the UN numbers are preferrable. This means, barring false-flags and ignoring short-shot misfires by either side, Ukrainian forces killed 5 times as many civilians as the other side did.

Amnesty International, November 6, 2014

"The large majority of the [civilian] deaths were in separatist-held territory in Donetsk, and were likely caused by Ukrainian government forces, but separatist forces appeared responsible for several deaths in Avdiivka and Debaltseve, areas under government control. The organization’s research strongly suggests that separatist forces fired from these neighbourhoods, and Ukrainian government forces fired into them. In at least one instance, government forces placed an artillery position in a residential area." 

Separatist weapon placement in residential areas was "strongly suggest[ed]" while Ukraine's was apparently proven and stated as a fact. And yet, there were few civilian casualties on the Ukrainian side, and far heavier ones on the other side. The Ukrainians kill so many civilians, it doesn't seem they even aimed for military targets to begin with. It could be all the talk of indiscriminate weapons with poor aim misses the main point that these hits were probably no accident, but rather intentional state-sponsored terrorism.

Otherwise, the record is least clear in 2014, when it was likely higher rate of deaths in the PRs than in later years, applied to a much higher death toll. Probably at least 6:1 on around 1,786 civilian deaths = at least 1,531 civilians killed by Ukraine vs. at most 255 by the Peoples' Republics, from April to December. Civilian deaths per year:

2014: 2,084 (1,786 + 298 on MH17)

2015: 955

2016: 112

2017: 117

2018-2021: 58, 27, 26, and 25, at the end mostly from unexploded ordinances. (UN report)  especially in 2021 as the ceasefires was mainly held to, as it turns out, while Ukraine prepared to violate the Minsk accords with a publicly threatened reconquest of Crimea (March, 2021) and subsequent force buildup in the Donbas and then shelling of civilian homes and infrastructure, starting in November 21 and accelerating in January and February, before Russian forces finally entered the war for real, 8 years into it. (see here)

2014 Disputed Attacks (a few examples)

So 2014 is the big question regarding civilian casualties prior to Russia's invasion. Both sides blamed each other for everything that happened, and it was a lot. I can help us get some idea which side was lying. 

June and July: Deadly Airstrikes 

For the most part, the attacks used artillery shells, rockets and missiles fired from the ground. I often call all of this "shelling," and I think that's technically correct. But at first, Ukraine was more bold and used fighter jets only they had to attack civilian targets on the ground. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_in_Donbas

On 2 June, eight people were killed and more than 20 wounded by a series of explosions hitting the occupied RSA building in Luhansk city.[185] Separatists blamed the incident on a government airstrike, while Ukrainian officials denied this, and claimed that the explosions were caused by a stray surface-to-air missile fired by insurgents.[186] The Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) published a report on the next day, stating that based on "limited observation", they believed that the explosion was caused by an airstrike, supporting separatist claims.[187]

A CNN investigation found clear evidence that the attack came from the air and the pattern of the craters suggested use of standard equipment on the Su-25, a ground-attack fighter, and the Su-27 – both combat aircraft operated by Ukraine.[185] Radio Liberty also concluded that "Despite Denials, All Evidence For Deadly Explosion Points To Kyiv".[188] CNN said that it was the first time that civilians had been killed in an attack by the Ukrainian air force during the 2014 pro-Russian unrest in the Donbas.[185] The next day, Luhansk People's Republic declared a three-day mourning in the city.[189]

More here at the ACLOS wiki I helped start. Note that one of those killed, here at the government's HQ, was the LPR's Minister of Agriculture, killed along with another woman she was talking with outside the building. One of the women (I'm not sure which) was seen alive in a terrifying aftermath video, her lower body shredded, pleading for someone to help find her phone so she could call someone.

A month later: BBC July 15 "Rockets struck the town of Snizhne in Donetsk region around 07:00 (04:00 GMT), hitting a block of flats and a tax office. The rebels blamed the attack on Ukraine's air force - a claim denied by Ukrainian sources. ... Ukrainian officials said 11 people had been killed and eight injured, including a child. Earlier, they had put the toll at four while rebels spoke of around 10 civilians being killed." When Ukraine denies and downplays at the same time, it's troubling. 

The BBC report shared a video of the apartment building with entire floors in the middle reduced to rubble - rescuers dig through it by hand for survivors. Why would Kyiv do this? No one seemed to care much or for long. 

It was in this same town of Snizhne, just two days later, that separatists supposedly smuggled in a Russian BUK air defense system, as if to prevent another such attack there. By the video record, it was stationed in the fields south of town (ACLOS), from which it purportedly shot down Malaysian Airlines flight MH-17 that same afternoon, killing 298. Interpretations of this incident vary widely, and I have complex thoughts but no firm theory, and also barely followed case developments since 2014. But the basic suggestion I see as likely enough is that the separatists made a terrible mistake as they tried to defend themselves from Ukraine's denied terrorism. But it just sharpened what "terrorists" Ukraine was up against At right: President Poroshenko, July 21: the whole world is either "with the terrorists" or "with the civilized world." And does he even need to specify which is which? Just days after MH-17, no. 

July Grad Rocket Attacks in Donetsk

HRW report, July 24, 2014

Just focusing on attacks with grad rockets, HRW reported 13 people, including 2 children, were killed in two attacks on July 12, and another 3 were killed in an attack on the 21st, with 2 non-fatal attacks in between. 

"Although Ukrainian government officials and the press service of the National Guard have denied using Grad rockets in Donetsk, a Human Rights Watch investigation on the ground strongly indicates that Ukrainian government forces were responsible for the attacks that occurred between July 12 and 21."

The four attacks took place close to the front line ... In all four cases, the angle and shape of the craters, and the fact that they were on the side of buildings facing the front line, strongly suggests that the rockets came from the direction of Ukrainian government forces or pro-Kiev armed groups.

The direction isn't specified, but most likely northwest. That's usually the case. Here's an apartment building with at least 2 apartments seemingly hit with 2 shells (no details past Donetsk, 2014 - from a video) - high sun suggests midday in summer, so the impacted side faces at least partly to the north. (A video compilation of building damage from 2014 shelling, on RUTUBE)

 

Starting in August, missiles fired on Donetsk in large numbers scattered cluster munitions far and wide, killing and injuring then and into the future. But we'll discuss this below with HRW analysis including further attacks in October. 

On September 5, a ceasefire was agreed. According to DPR officials, the ceasefire was violated by Ukraine many times, ten times in just one day, September 20, damaging homes and killing 4 civilians in the Peoples' Republics. (Sputnik Globe)

October 1 Rocket Attacks on School & City Bus 

On October 1, the ceasefire was broken again with 10 killed in Donetsk, 4 at school on the first day of classes. and 6 in another hit on a city bus.

France 24: "A source in Donetsk city hall told AFP that the strike happened right after the school's 70 pupils lined up for an assembly to mark the first day of class -- held nationally on September 1 but pushed back by rebel authorities because of the conflict."

"The children were taken to the basement; they are still there," the source said.

The pro-Kiev regional government of Donetsk, which is now based in the government-controlled city of Mariupol, accused pro-Russian separatists of the self-declared "Donetsk People's Republic" of shelling the school.

"The Donetsk People's Republic used rocket launchers to shoot at a school... the shell exploded five metres away from the building," the regional administration said in a statement.

Six more people died when another shell struck a public minibus in Donetsk, the regional authorities said, making Wednesday's casualty figures the highest civilian death toll in a single day since a ceasefire was struck.

As it happens, I already checked this one, a couple years go, mainly the bus but also the school impact. The pro-Kyiv crowd cited the bus attack as evidence the separatists were to blame, for this if not everything. Reason: the rocket was fired from the southwest, not the northwest as usual. "For those not from #Donetsk: the projectile on Poligraficheskaya, which killed 8 people, came from the side of the city, not the airport (see diagram)." At least 2 others did their own analysis to similar effect - origin to the southwest. Tacit acknowledgement: other attacks HAVE come from the airport direction (NW).

I checked and the readings are correct enough, for the bus and the school. The bus rocket tube points SW, which most read as the direction. It might be, but these can bend on the final stop, just after the detonation, as this one might have. The splash pattern of fragmentation marks on the pavement is the best indicator. It's not totally visible, but the shape to me suggests an origin closer to due south. My red line below runs due south, which may be too literal. It could be a bit either way, more likely SW, or anywhere in the range marked by white lines. Lower right shows the approximate front line at the time. 

The school damage wasn't as clear or easy to read, but especially so close to the damaged south facade, that shell to seemingly came from the south in almost the same way, but with less indication of SW, more likely due south (see post for details).

Smerch rockets used - If that means BM-30 (Wikipedia), it can fire different rockets with different ranges up to 100 and even 200km, and other models with shorter ranges, so it's hard for me to say. The front line is less than 20km to the SW, down to a Ukrainian-held are to the due south about 35-40km out and spanning to 60 km. 20-40km is needed, depending. so that could be a long-range, pretty normal or maybe even short-range use, depending on the exact rocket used. 

"DPR deputy leader Andrei Purgin told Russian TV that Ukrainian rocket launchers had targeted residential areas from as far as 40km (25 miles) away." (BBC) It could be from the edge of that area about 40km due south. It could also be a closer attack from a more SW direction, or any distance after sneaking east behind enemy lines is entirely possible. And the DPR doing it is entirely possible. So this case is inconclusive, and it's the top example to suggest DPR/Russian false-flag terrorism in the first year (I found 3 people on Twitter pushing this one, no one pushing any others, at least in English). 

But as I showed, a south or southwest angle is also not nearly as conclusive as these people made it seem. In fact, the next day, Human Rights Watch would use the same basic angle to prove it was Ukraine shelling Donetsk, now with cluster munitions.

August-October Cluster Munitions on Donetsk

August to October: cluster munitions fired on Donetsk and other towns, both before and after the September ceasefire. Human Rights Watch, October 20, 2014:

"Ukrainian government forces used cluster munitions in populated areas in Donetsk city in early October 2014, Human Rights Watch said today. The use of cluster munitions in populated areas violates the laws of war due to the indiscriminate nature of the weapon and may amount to war crimes."

In the 12 incidents documented by Human Rights Watch, cluster munitions killed at least 6 people and injured dozens." There were others they didn't investigate. Their analysis found "the cluster munitions came from the direction of government-controlled areas southwest of Donetsk." 

"The government of Ukraine has neither confirmed nor denied using cluster munitions in eastern Ukraine. It has not responded to a letter sent by the Cluster Munition Coalition in July or a letter sent by Human Rights Watch on October 13."

On October 2, 3 rockets were used on areas southwest of Universitetskaya street in central Donetsk, each one scattering submunitions over a wide area. One of the rockets hit at a supermarket that had a Red Cross center attached. "Thirty-eight-year-old Laurent DuPasquier, a Swiss employee with the International Committee of the Red Cross ... was killed during the attack in which cluster munition rockets were used." "Also on October 2, submunitions from another Uragan cluster munition rocket struck the building of the Mountain Rescue Service, at 157 Artem street in Donetsk." Red Cross and rescue people were targeted. 

"Submunition impact craters close to buildings in the three sites make it unlikely that the cluster munition came from the west, north, or east. The large crater in the second location indicated that the rocket had come from the southwest. This is the only direction consistent with all the impact craters, and therefore points to use by Ukrainian forces."

Then on October 5, "at least two Uragan cluster munition rockets struck the fifth subdistrict of the Kyivskyi district in central Donetsk.  ... A video of a rocket remnant lodged in the ground near 22 Kosiora street indicates that the cluster munitions were fired from the southwest. Supporting this finding, a local resident in Novomykhailivka, southwest of Donetsk, told a New York Times journalist that he had seen rockets launched from a position south of village in the morning of October 5."

In Makiivka, just east of Donetsk, HRW heard that "cluster munitions had killed two people on August 19 and 20 near a train station" while "a second cluster munition attack took place near a rebel checkpoint northeast of the town, suggesting a government attack." There was a third attack as well, but no directions are given for any of them. 

Starobesheve, southeast of Donetsk, was contested on August 24, with separatists in control of some areas and soon the whole town, when cluster munitions struck near the local administration building, killing 3 civilians and injuring 17. 

"The rocket tail section stuck in the ground in front of the local administration building shows that the rocket came from the southeast. With a maximum range of 70 kilometers and the Ukraine-Russia border 30 kilometers away, the cluster munitions could have been fired from Ukrainian territory southeast of Starobesheve, which was controlled by Ukrainian government forces at the time, or from Russian territory. The press center for the Ukrainian authorities’ counterterrorist operation claimed at the time that the cluster munitions had been fired from Russian territory. Human Rights Watch was not able to conclusively attribute responsibility for this attack."

Well, what does the reader think? 

November 5 Attack on Kids Playing Football

BBC November 5 "Two teenagers died and four were wounded when an artillery shell hit a school playing field as they played football in eastern Ukraine." A report of the OSCE special monitoring mission (SMM) heard  It was at 3:30 pm that 2 artillery shells impacted at School No. 63 on Stepanenko Street in Donetsk, with one hitting the football field.  A witness heard eight explosions. "According to him the first two occurred in quick succession. The other six occurred within five minutes of the first." "2 shells hit where children were playing at School No. 63 on Stepanenko Street, Donetsk," probably the first 2 quick hits. "The SMM saw human remains scattered around the pitch, including bone fragments, blood and internal organs. Blood-stained clothing was also visible, which appeared to have been torn by shrapnel."

Amnesty International declared: “Today’s shocking attack in Donetsk must by fully investigated. If it is found to constitute a war crime, those responsible must be brought to justice.”

Pro-Kyiv UNIAN would argue "Shell that hit school in Donetsk ‘fired from militant-controlled Makiivka’" Someone named Perebyinis (app. Yevhen Perebyinis, Deputy Foreign Minister of Ukraine) is cited saying "The shell that hit the school and killed [those] children in Donetsk was fired from territory controlled by the terrorists. We have photo evidence of it," he tweeted. "Perebyinis posted photos that he said proved that the militants were to blame for shelling the school. According to these photos, the shelling was carried out by insurgents from the occupied town of Makiivka, which is located to the east of Donetsk." 

No photos are shown, just a satellite view with a red line pointing almost due east, and a wider map showing a range of possible directions from the east. "The red line on the Google map shown above indicates the shell trajectory, as calculated by analysts at the ukraine@war blog." (site apparently defunct now) A video explaining the point was attached, but is no longer present. 

Update: found the tweet and linked page "Rocket that hit School No63 did not come from Peski." He doesn't seem to know what he's doing. "It is clear that the shell bent the fence and not the explosion, because the right part of the fence is not bent at all where the explosion hit." No, that's because this is the back direction where the force is directed down into the ground rather than up into the fence. (see below) 

I found some photos of the field impact and tried my own best reading: impact near NW corner, right at the north fence, blasting a narrow, deep crater there, tearing the fence up to the east (and up = forward), with curling inward = force from the west, near parallel with fence but a bit from the outside (north) - scorching from the ignition fireball spreads east (= forward on trajectory) - low frag marks appear a ways back, stop on a line running SW, and behind that the turf peels back with even lower force (and low = back). All this says arrival from northwest, not the east. I use the orange arc differently here, to include the low marks on the side and scorching ahead, as the splash pattern behind seems interrupted by the concrete and fence pole, winds up peeling turf instead. It is a bit hard to read, perhaps giving Perebyinis some excuse to read it almost backwards. 

(photos: https://tass.com/russia/758729 - https://ria.ru/20141106/1031957968.html - Google image search

Ukraine@War reading, upper left - my reading right - both mapped - I don't know the range, or length of the white line, just the direction. It could be from Pisky, further out, or closer in, but very little space for any DPR false-flag, and nothing but the flawed east origin was ever said to suggest that. Pisky or Peski is exactly where Perebyinis said the shell did NOT come from, so I suppose that's just where it came from, roughly.

The observers of the supposedly neutral but seemingly Ukraine-biased OSCE had to contradict Kyiv here, probably due to the evidence rather than any pro-Russian bias. Report

"The SMM also noted a crater in the playground, near the eastern wall" besides "three craters near a damaged apartment building," and "three other craters on nearby Myrhorodska Street. The SMM observed damage to a number of houses near these craters."

"All craters seen by the SMM were about one metre in diameter and the depths varied. The SMM’s analysis indicates that at least four of the craters were caused by 120mm mortar shells and two others were the result of 122mm artillery rounds." Probably the 2 bigger shells were used to kill the kids playing soccer. 

"In the SMM’s assessment, all of these were fired from a location north-west of the football pitch and were the result of high-angle fire." High angle, I think, means relatively short range. That would make for an extra vertical impact, which I think fits the damage. 

"At 09:25, the shelling obliged the SMM to leave the area. The SMM heard loud explosions about two kilometres away to the south-west."

Conclusion

A November 14 speech by President Poroshenko might have referred to these repeated school attacks when he assured people in Odessa they took the right path in rejecting the "terrorism." because "Our children will go to kindergartens and schools, theirs will be sitting in cellars. [bomb shelters] Because they can't do anything! That’s how we are going to win this war." When their whole lives are disrupted Ukraine wins. Suffering is the goal? Or is it when the "terrorists" finally die or flee to Russia, leaving the land to Ukraine? It also helps to win that they don't have to take credit for imposing this life on their enemies; according to the post-2014 weapon-state of Ukraine, the kids in Donbas were hiding exclusively from Russian or separatist fire, as a civilized state like Ukrainian would never do such a thing as target innocent civilians, even if they were "Russian terrorists." 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lUp-sh1oaOU

Massacring Protesters: Really?

The First Straw and Big Question Assessed
September 10, 2011
last edits, Sept. 29

The Order to Kill Demonstrators: Generally Accepted
Huge neon question marks have by now been affixed, usually to the less-visible  back sides, of most of the constructed accusations of the Libyan propaganda war. Human Rights Watch and others have repeatedly found against African mercenary claims, Amnesty International and others have found no basis for the general mass rape charges  (adding Viagra to the mix seems to done the field in). Even the US military acknowledged there was no evidence of aerial bombardment of Libyan cities and protesters as widely alleged, when there really should have been some. The emotionally potent charge of Children shot by Gaddafi snipers in Misrata might sound compelling, but anyone with the two shown x-ray images can see they're the same, fake, image (see link).

But one crucial accusation, the first and perhaps tallest construct, looms over the rest with no flashing sign yet, remaining generally accepted, even among such critics: the government order to shoot at peaceful demonstrators simply for daring to protest. The charges of doing so from the air are rightly ridiculed, but few go as far as I will here and directly question whether it was done from the ground either.

It's not a patently ridiculous claim, and one supported by numerous injured civilians we were shown. No one can deny that people who are described as protesters were injured and killed by live fire, at different times and places, often vague. Some were even cut in half (by anti-aircraft guns it's said) in pictures I've seen. At first, I myself accepted the basic accusation, thinking Gaddafi just didn't play the Arab Spring game. If his populace was to be weaponized against the "revolution" by the usual Western conspirators (as I'm sure he'd suspect after following events of the past decade) he'd move to destroy their weapons. You simply kill some, and hopefully send the others running in fear. It surely wouldn't have been the first time an unfree state used such sheer force to stay that way.

But while there is plenty of precedent, and proof of injured and killed people to support the accusation, what's never been scientifically proven (supported by clear video evidence, for example) is the exact circumstances of this violence - where were these civilians at and what were they doing when damaged so? The question is a complex one, and perhaps impossible to settle decisively. I've been considering this question but haven't until now created a dedicated post to best address it in one spot. Now that it's up, you can see why - it's a doozy of a post.

The Government Story: Defending Bases
We all know the official story in the international community, almost universally accepted at the moment: the insane and ruthless col Gaddafi ordered his citizens slaughtered for simply defying his rule, but damnit, now we would defy it too. They were simply protesting in some peaceful protest place when it happened. They did nothing to provoke or necessitate the violence they suffered. Troops fired indiscriminately, killing women and children, people not even protesting. They had snipers shooting those who tried to retrieve the dead, and so on. They did so consistently enough it couldn't be the actions of rogue commanders, but had to be an order from on high, presumably from Muammar Gaddafi himself.

This primordial sin, almost universally perceived worldwide, was the basis of Gaddafi's forfeiture of legitimacy in the eyes of world leaders. The exact death toll was always vague, but presented as alarmingly high and likely requiring some intervention. (note: the exact death toll is not clear, is important, but is not addressed here. This is about the qualities of death, not quantities.)

But below is, first, a video I made a while back, and then some text, that seek to first explain and then explore the Libyan government's own version, which hardly anyone's heard except maybe in passing derision.

In the video, government spokesman Moussa Ibrahim can be seen at a February 28 press conference explaining their view, as opposed to that of "the media and the UN." At the beginning, there were "genuine, Libyan, peaceful protesters" with what he called "legitimate demands" for "much-needed political improvements." Some of them also waved the old monarchist flag while insisting that Gaddafi step down, which the government would not call a legitimate demand. But they weren't shot for anything they said, Ibrahim asserted, legitimate or not. This only happened after the protests were "hijacked" by violent Islamists, including members of al Qaeda, into a physical attack on Libya's government and people.

"[The Islamist-led "protesters"] immediately moved to attack and acquire weapons from police stations, army camps, and munitions depots. [...] the fights between the security forces and the armed individuals caused the deaths of hundreds of people. We never denied that hundreds of people were killed in the last few days. But those people were from both sides, and as a result of armed individuals attacking police stations and army [barracks] [...] the army and the security forces were not trained to deal with such a dramatic turn of events."

Also in the video, the leader's son Seif al-Islam Gaddafi says a total of 159 people, presumably on the civilian side alone, were killed in the rebellion's first days. "Most of them died when they attacked military sites," he said. This is from a July interview with Russia Today, in which he again denied any order to kill protesters, and explained the cause of the shooting so:

"The guards fired. That's it. The gurads were surprised by the attack of the people, and they started firing. They don't need an order to defend themselves and to defend their bases and camps."

As he rightly noted, this is standard for any country in the world, should armed and angry mobs attack a secure installation. The idea seems to be to avoid enemies, foreign or domestic, from killing your forces, sabotaging your hardware, or worse yet stealing your hardware. Because then it can be used to attack more bases in furtherance of a violent civil war, as the Libyan government alleges happened repeatedly in their country from the early days onward. The explanation fell on deaf ears (or hard-of-hearinng ones - see below).

Just for one example of an even softer response, protesters filmed themselves firing their guns into a military base around Feb 21, and suffering no violence themselves. But they did cheer with gunshots in the air as an ambulance took out someone injured inside. (see video study here) A documentary by R. Breki Goheda, based on the government's version with detailed information, shows this same camp (perhaps near Misrata), before it was finally taken by the armed civilian gang. Inside the opened gates, we can see in the distance soldiers standing at the alert, clustered with vehicles. Goheda's narration says they "refused to open fire at protesters," and instead only "opened fire into the air as the attackers were advancing in the barrack." It's said the protesters won there, as they seem to have everywhere else with a strange confidence against a bewildered enemy, in what Goheda artfully termed an "organized and coincident process." 

The Video Record: No Proof Either Way

Secretary of State Clinton said on February 28, in support of vigorous action against Libya, "we have seen Colonel Qadhafi’s security forces open fire on peaceful protesters again and again." Unless she and some associated "we" have access to secret videos and photos the rest of us don't, she's simply incorrect. We have seen it reported and alleged time and time again, but that's just not the same thing. 

The first problem I noticed in comparing Tripoli's explanation and that of the rabble forces was a lack of video proof either way.

The proof of the government's side might have been base security camera tapes, but these aren't likely available to them after each of the facilities was taken over. Whereas if the "protester" version was true, there would not likely be any lack of such proof; they'd end up with the tapes from the bases. And more importantly, the crowds had many, many iPhones and other cameras everywhere they went, and aside from their proud excursions into racist snuff films, we see in their  recordings people protesting, and then civilians injured and dead. There should be several videos, probably dozens, showing the crucial middle part - some of those hundreds of peaceful protesters visibly knocked down by government bullets. Instead we have three that I know of, discussed next. (see:  Video Study: Protesters Being Shot, Anywhere)

While the government's got no video of these base attacks either, one protester video at least provides a decent support for Tripoli's claims of repeated armed attacks. It's widely illustrated that on consecutive days, February 17-20, protests and/or funeral processions in Beghazi turned somehow into violent clashes with deaths on both sides. It probably didn't help that these kept happening next to the Al-Fadhil bin Omar Katiba barracks, Benghazi's main military base in the city's center.

On the third day, February 19, we have video of two injured "protesters," one apparently just deceased, the other being carried up a street from somewhere to the west-southwest, away from the setting sun. The spot it's filmed was identifiable in satellite imagery, and proves the injured man was being carried down al-Hijaz street, away from the Katiba's valued north gate four blocks back. (see map at left, and the post February 19's death toll  in Benghazi for more details). Keep that north gate in mind - it comes up again in the conquest by "protest" of that base on the following day. 

To be sure, some of Muammar Gaddafi's and the Libyan government's claims, freely mixing al Qaeda, foreigners, mass drugging, mass rape, cannibalism, and CIA manipulations, are questionable at best. But the part about a violent and apparently orchestrated turn of events is well supported. Any government would probably have responded at least as harshly as Libya's did. 

No Proof, but Evidence: Exceptions to the Rule?

Seif al-Islam said "most," not "all," of the killed civilians were involved in attacks. We don't know what "most" means from their point of view, but there do seem to be exceptions to the rule. 

There are two instances I'm aware of (and I admit my knowledge there isn't exhaustive) of apparently unarmed civilians shot dead on camera. These both happened during a funeral march on a certain street in al Baida on February 17, and were captured by three cameras, one from street level and two from above.  I've analyzed the videos and collectively, they show two unarmed people shot down in the street, at different times, some distance from a line of armed police/soldiers at the end of the street.   

No other gunmen are visible from these rooftop views or from the ground view (except maybe a couple), so the presence of security men in the area, some would argue, is enough to demonstrate the pattern alleged. But some evidence supports my strange hunch that anti-government snipers on rooftops - apparently next to the cameras filming - were responsible. 

There's video 2's strange camera move to consider - popping from behind a possible sniper nest to film the crowd again just as the shot is fired. And there's the possible rifle on that same rooftop filmed by a another camera (video 1 as listed). And then consider the line of sight. Each of the two protesters were shot as they came into camera view, which is also the line of fire for any sniper in the same location.

But my theory, even though better illustrated than I thought it would be, is not proven. But these possible sniper clues hover above all three of the videos and both filmed victims of unprovoked shooting that I know of. I will leave this space open for any other excepions to, or refutations of, "the rule" that I run across or have suggested. Evidence of apparent state brutality like these videos is not proof, but it is worth a look, and I challenge any reader who thinks I must be wrong to please dig around for anything to support that hunch.  

Defiance of the Order as Evidence of the Order
One of the more powerful illustration of the alleged commandment to massacre was the repeated allegation of government soldiers executed for refusing to follow it. We only know of this because their bound and executed bodies were then found by protesters with a magical knowledge of just why they'd been slain - "because they would not commit the brutality commanded to them."

On February 23, a total of 130 soldiers were reported by a sham Human Rights  group as executed like this and for this reason across Eastern Libya. There was no evidence to support that, and enough against to disprove it in at least 27 cases. First, 22 soldiers executed by rebels, as their own video proves, were boldly blamed on the regime for "refusing to fire on civilians," and included in the 130. Ironically, their rebel-issued death sentence has been translated as based on the fact they DID shoot at the armed people attacking their base (apparently Labraq airbase).

And another, more horrific case of fobbed-off rebel brutality, presumably also included in the same 130, concerns another five "soldiers" found charred in the conquered barracks in Benghazi. This find occurred on February 21, right after "protesters" there had burned to death five innocent men from Chad. That's 27 so-called mutinous soldiers executed. The oher 103 we just don't know the details, but the patterns illustrated so far do not line up with what the rebels asserted.

Evidence by executions, claimed by rabble forces, when the killings are demonstratably carried out by them, clearly does nothing to support their own claim. In fact, it goes strongly and ingeniously towards disproving altogether the legend of the order to cut down peaceful protesters.

Maj. Gen. Younes, Deadly Force, and the Benghazi Katiba
In his Russia Today interview, Seif Gaddafi explained how his reaction to news of massacres in his country was to get ahold of the man in charge of internal security - the interior minister, Maj. Gen. Abdel Fateh Younes.

"My father called the general Abdel Fatah - he's in Benghazi now - he's one of the leaders of the rebels. He called him, and I called him, and the calls are recorded. We told him many times: "don't use force with people." He told us: "but they are attacking the military sites. It's a very difficult situation."

Younes apparently won that dispute, and by the 20th, as Benghazi teetered on the brink, the secretary himself rolled a major reinforcement in personally, ready to negotiate or fight. Instead he defected, marking a major turning point in the war no one even knew was a war yet.

He was sent to re-enforce the Al-Fadhil bin Omar barracks. Many sources agree the base was decisively takend Feb 20, following an attack by a suicide car-bomber who'd blended into the fourth day of funeral processions-turned-to-battles there. After he destroyed the valued north gate with a truly powerful explosion (also not seen on any public videos), the insurgents were able to enter the base full-force. They reportedly killed an unknown number of soldiers, beheading at least one, before Younes had even arrived. The remainder, holed-up in various buildings, were spared and allowed to leave only by the bargain Younes struck that night.

The French terrorism and intelligence groups CIRET-AVT and CF2R made a joint investigation in Libya and issued a report in May, 2011. Speculating on reasons for the lack of protester shooting they saw evidence for, they offer a little conspiracy theory about the eventual star defector:

The government, surprised at the escalation of the insurgency, did not want to start a blood bath, so as not cut themselves off from the tribes, nor to create the problem of vendetta (revenge.) It is not inconceivable that the interior minister (Abdel Fatah Younis) deliberately gave orders to do nothing, so the insurgency could take hold, from the perspective of his imminent departure for Benghazi.

That is, perhaps Seif was lying and such an order was issued, but blocked by Younes. Either way, if there was such an order from on high, it didn't get sent down the chain, judging by the evidence - and lack thereof - for its execution.

They did get the Weapons
The first thing that really struck me as odd about the first days of the civil war is how non-violent protesters, whom I believed were being shot dead in droves, were able with just anger, and despite the heavy losses, simply take military control, even briefly, of half of the cities in the country. I sensed we were missing something there, and the things I've found since are starting to reveal what that was.

The "protesters" did, starting on February 19 at the latest, acquire heavy weapons of war from military bases they somehow conquered, despite just protesting. For just one important example, the Katiba in Benghazi remained in protester hands thanks in part to Younes' defection. But as they made off with many many more weapons, it was civilians doing the driving and handling, not military professionals. These were happy just to be allowed to leave the scene alive, in the opposite direction.


Some of the hardware taken from the Katiba is seen at left from a Russia Today news video - tanks, Grad rocket launchers, and more. Other weapons taken from Zintan to Zawiyah, Misrata to Dernah, were shown in other videos made by protesters, and largely included in my own video up top.

Goheda's video explains that "rebels stormed most of the military camps in the country," along the way seizing "different types of weapons, including: 250 tanks, 72 armored vehicles, 112 artillery, 176 anti-aircraft machine guns, 254 rocket launchers, 222 light machine guns, 3,628 rifles, and a large quantity of ammunition." I can't vouch for all of that, but it sounds about right considering the small samples we've been able to see of rebel arsenals coming together all across "Free Libya" in those early days and weeks.

Every time a new city center saw its display of rebel-held weaponry, the "freedom fighters" would trumpet that the military there had defected, bringing their weapons along. We see claimed defectors in original uniforms and such in a few videos, and some later in rebel non-uniforms. The people holding the weapons are usually clear amateurs so excited to be armed like Rambo they can't help but fire into the air incessantly. Consider this video analysis by C.J. Chivers; not a person on the crew running this artillery piece in Misrata knew they were standing ten times too close to that wall for safety. At least two rebel fighters were injured by the sloppiness, including one whose femoral artery was severed and who likely died soon after. (But they did the job - the place they were blasting was like swiss cheese, and had several very destroyed government soldiers and a mysterious charred boy inside.)

Brutality and the Boys in Blue
Libya's Internal Security Organization, being the usual force to control and deal with crowds and riots, would have been the main people expected to fire on protesters on, before, and after the "Day of Rage" that brought "peaceful protesters" out to tear down the state. It was Internal Security who held that line in al Baida, and were blamed for the shootings of the 17th and many others. But according to Goheda's video, they were given orders "not to open fire under any circumstances." Other than the al-Baida videos discussed above, I've seen no evidence to counter that.

Another video I made:

Instead, as we can see there, the brutality was generally against them. Several among the dead at in the "al Baida massacre" wear the blue camouflage, along with another black-skinned ISO cop, tortured horribly and shown off as an African mercenary in Az Zintan. Not included in the video, another ISO soldier, by his blue jacket, was killed and badly mangled in some town, his limp and disjointed body then hoisted up joyously in the gate of some official building by a meat hook under his chin. (this is visible here)

The CIRET-AVT/CF2R report cited above also discussed the three weeks in which az Zawiyah, just west of the capitol, remained in protester hands unmolested. “During the three weeks, the police received written orders not to do anything against the insurgents, not to shoot, not to confront them. The police also had to evacuate their own buildings due to the attacks by the rioters. […] The local authorities and the police complained openly about the absence of orders from Tripoli…” As for what happened during those weeks, I have a great analysis here, and the report added:

[A]ll public buildings were pillaged and set on fire. [...] Everywhere, there was destruction and pillaging (of arms, money, archives). There was no trace of combat, which confirms the testimony of the police [who claim to have received orders not to intervene] [...]

There were also atrocities committed (women who were raped, and some police officers who were killed), as well as civilian victims during these three weeks. [...] The victims were killed in the manner of the Algerian GIA [Armed Islamic Group]: throats cut, eyes gauged [sic] out, arms and legs cut off, sometimes the bodies were burned. [...]

Another Official Story Assessed: The UNHRC Report
The United Nations Human Rights Council sent a three-person fact-finding mission to Libya in May to investigate the alleged crimes of the regime and/or rebel forces. They issued a report (the Advance unedited version is still the only one available - PDF link) on June 1 that came out at least somewhat more reasonable than what the rebel-fed Media had so far patched together. They explain how the charge of Gaddafi's protester massacre was their primary focus:

The catalyst for establishment of this Commission of Inquiry was concern over the use of force against demonstrators in mid to late February. The Human Rights Council in Resolution S-15/1, expressed “deep concern at the deaths of hundreds of civilians,” referring also to “indiscriminate armed attacks against civilians” and “extrajudicial killings.”[p3]

What they found confirmed, to their satisfaction but not mine, that there were apparently orders to kill peaceful protesters. From their conclusion:

99. The Commission considers that there is sufficient evidence to suggest that the Government forces engaged in excessive use of force against demonstrators, at least in the early days of the protests, leading to significant deaths and injuries. The nature of injuries inflicted in several locations (with high proportions shot in the head or upper body) is indicative of “shoot to kill” operations. From the common style of response in many parts of the country, it would appear likely that the forces were given orders to engage in the harsh crackdown of demonstrators. Such actions represented a serious breach of a range of rights under the ICCPR including the right to life, the right to ... [p 37-40]

The question, again, is "under what circumstances did these killings happen?" The report does acknowledge the government disputed the prevailing story: "The particular circumstances, leading up to the use of force by security forces against demonstrators, have been contested by the demonstrators and the Government." The latter said what I've related above, and "protestors have reiterated the peaceful nature of their demonstrations." The facts, as I note here, do not clearly support that, but the commission accepted it anyway.

"In the early days of the protest there was little evidence to suggest that the protestors were engaged in other than peaceful assembly," the mission noted. "Little" evidence is a relative call. There's a decent amount and it's consistent. There is even less evidence that those "protesters" who were killed were engaged in anything other than starting an armed insurgency.

The report's relation and refutation of the government story:

96. The Commission was told that when the demonstrations erupted, instructions were given to security forces to withdraw from police stations and security premises. The Government has stressed that the live ammunition was only employed in response to demonstrators’ violent actions. The Government also noted that demonstrators attacked police stations, destroying approximately 17 stations several of them in various cities and towns of Libya, and that demonstrators took up arms against the security forces. The Government was thus of the view that any use of force had been justifiable.

97. The majority of information collected by the Commission, however, indicates that the Government forces used live ammunition against unarmed peaceful demonstrators in many instances.

Generally they just catalog the numbers of dead as reported, focusing on the shoot-to-kill clues, presuming peaceful actions only on the victims' parts, and accepting every report possible to suggest government forces fired "indiscriminately," often killing people who weren't even involved in protests. The whole way what's missing is any proof their basic presumption of peaceful victims. Since this has not really been established, the report, at least in this regard, is an exercise in faith-based "investigation."

It is accepted by both the Government and the demonstrators that Government forces used significant force, including the use of firearms and other weaponry against persons participating in demonstrations in various locations within Libya during the period studied by the Commission. 

Adding "participating in demonstrations" makes this statement untrue. Attacks to secure weapons are not "demonstrations." Scratch that phrase and what they say here is true.

They acknowledge in Misrata, "on 21 and 22 February, demonstrators attacked Revolutionary Committee offices, police stations and military barracks, taking arms and weapons from these locations." But as they heard it, this was only after days of brutal attacks on completely peaceful people who were suddenly, when angry, able to actually take over and remove weapns from military bases - with sheer Arab Spring enthusiasm, we're to presume.

In al Baida, "at least 40 persons were killed during peaceful demonstrations between 16 and 19 February," they noted. Problem is, police station were burnt there as early as Feb 15, anti-government snipers might have been behind any of these killings (and apparently are behind the recorded ones), and by about the 19th, the city and surrounding military bases - including Labraq (or al-Abraq) airbase - were completely in the hands of the "peaceful protesters."

93. On 18 February, at the demonstrations near Al-Abraq Airport (east of Al-Bayda town), the Commission received information that 11 persons were killed by security personnel of Khamis Katiba, including the Commander of Husein al-Jiwiki Katiba. According to several sources, the Commander was killed when he refused to shoot at demonstrators, and was shot as a result of his refusal to shot at demonstrators. 

Yeah, you'll get "several witnesses" when, for example, several people involved in a killing agree to a cover story. The big clues is the old "killed by his own forces for being a good guy" schtick. It was a lie in the "al Baida massacre," and in the burned soldiers in Benghazi thing, and probably here.

Why do they know it was the Khamis brigade that killed an officer and 11 of their own? Why were they "demonstrating" at the airbase to begin with? The people involved themselves told the media, if not the UN, that they went there, on the 18th, to capture or kill "African mercenaries" they thought were coming to kill them. They took it militarily on about the 20th, after a couple days of fighting, executed some prisoners, and kept 156 black Libyan soldiers alive long enough to be proven not mercenaries. That some of their own were killed in the process should be no surprise, to us or them, prepared as they were for martyrdom.

The claim of government orders to kill demonstrators weren't just on the word of rebel sources but also, the report explained,"corroborated through information collected from some security personnel."

One member of security personnel, currently in detention, stated that he was among 250 soldiers deployed by the regime to “contain demonstrators” in Benghazi on 17 February. Interrogation records provided to the Commission by the Benghazi General Prosecutor’s Office state that members of the security forces were given orders, by their commanding officers, to use force against demonstrators. In at least one transcript, there is an admission of involvement by a member of the security forces in the random shooting of protestors in Benghazi on 20 February.

February 20 is the day Benghazi fell, as the Al Fadhil bin Omar Katiba was overrun. The report did pass on that "government opponents assumed control over the Katiba premises in Benghazi," but made no mention of the suicide bomber that allowed that, or of the soldier killings inside. And it even has the date wrong, citing the 19th when the decisive brutality that took 60 lives, by their own numbers, occurred on the 20th, mostly following the suicide bombing and the pitched battle within the walls. Why on Earth was anyone firing randomly that day, when a concerted militant force was attacking the base and hacking off heads? 

His "admission" to doing this is just not credible. This claimed evidence from the inside is quite likely the result of forced confessions, and the commission's inability to spot that (or to admit they did) is telling.

The report is deeply flawed. But it formed the basis of explaining why the intervention the UN's top member nations were already deeply invested in was not completely unjustified. In fact, they seem relatively in tune with the existing mission in an accompanying press release, again of June 1:

The team, led by Professor Cherif Bassiouni, an Egyptian jurist and war crimes expert, calls on the Government to immediately cease acts of violence against civilians in violation of international humanitarian and human rights law, and to conduct “exhaustive, impartial and transparent” investigations into all alleged violations.

Even if this statement had been issued on February 18, it would have been poison advice to a besieged government. But here it was June, and they called for a current, one-sided cease-fire. There was no mention of the fact that by then the "civilians" were trying their damndest, with half the nation's stolen hardware, and with eager NATO air support, to attack the capitol and everything between. Mr. Bassiouni, like the power structure pushing this war through, was in effect calling for Libya's government to surrender abjectly to the armed insurgency.

This bold move of dubious propriety was based, it would seem to most, on the team's exceptionally clear findings that the government had proven itself brutal to the point of falling outside the normal rules of respect for nations the United Nations was supposed to ensure.

But the reality wasn't really as clear as all that, was it?

Gaddafi Carbonizes Families?

April 26 2011
Last updates/edits April 27

Over the weekend, Libyan government forces withdrew from the strategic town of Misrata - or so they said. In the last weeks of the fierce two-month siege, Gaddafi's troops and armor moved into the city, among the civilians. Thus they enjoyed relative immunity from NATO's once omnipotent air attacks. Yet despite this, they proved unable to decisively re-take the city in time.

The last straw is not certain, but the decision to pull out coincided with the NATO decision to fly US drone air-strikes in Misrata. They left, in fact, on April 23, the same day as the first missile fired by a predator unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV). It was claimed by NATO as hitting a rocket battery outside the city, and no other such attacks have been acknowledged in Misrata.

Despite the announced withdrawal from the city's safety, the NATO threat that waits outside the walls, and the new drone additions, shelling continued into the 24th and beyond. It's presumed, obviously, to be from Gaddafi's troops just hanging around out there. By reports, at least 20 more have been killed and perhaps 100 wounded in the last few days in these seemingly duplicitous attacks.

A New Horror: Carbonized in the Shelling

AFP reported on Monday, April 25, a whole new twist to civilian death in Misrata:

In the Mujamaa Tibi hospital, Mohamed al-Fajieh recounted the results of the night's fighting, describing unusually severe wounds and corpses reduced to little more than ashes. There were "completely charred corpses, some of them so badly burned that we aren't sure they are human bodies," he said. "This is the first time we've seen such burns."

According to figures provided by sources at hospitals across Misrata, around a dozen people were killed and at least 20 wounded in the latest fighting. Sources have said those caught up in the violence were all civilians - men, women and young children.

http://news.smh.com.au/breaking-news-world/nato-bombs-hit-kadhafi-office-rebels-advance-in-misrata-20110425-1dua9.html?skin=text-only

The Guardian posted a harrowing series of Twitter tweets to the same effect, at 10:24 am on the 25th. These had come in over the preceding hours from "the author and award-winning Sunday Times correspondent, Hala Jaber," sending on information called in to her from area hospitals.

#Misrata calling msg1: " Gaddafi toops bombing misurata heavly with rockets from the periphery of city," reported by doctor there. #Libya

#Misrata calling msg2: doctor reporting "Family arrived -- carbonized babies, mother, father. They were in their car." #Libya

#Misrata calling msg3: Doctors in hospital shocked by the state of children & families brought in dead.The pictures are really awful. #Libya

#Misrata calling msg 4: "People asleep in homes when GF fired mortars randomly. Shababs unable 2 brinbg dead who are still burning." #Libya

#Misrata calling msg 5; "The head of a baby brought in without his torso. Carbonized family so badly burnt placed in a bag 2gether" #Libya

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/blog/2011/apr/25/libya-syria-middle-east-uprising-live

Indeed, people need to see these images. Considering the above, it sounds like this strange flaming death struck out all over town, with many victims all at once. It's bizarre. All that Jaber shows, however, is three photographs, of a single "carbonized family" of three, by the captions. Image links and captions:
1) Please be warned extremely graphic picture of family totally carbonized in tonight's shelling.
2) Extremely graphic please be warned, but I believe they must be seen. Father of family totally carbonized as did his child and wife.
3) Eight year old Abdulnoor Muftah Abdulnoor killed tonight in Misrata.

I asked Hala to clarify some details via e-mail, and she kindly responded. She says Little Abdelnoor is not a member of the same family, so any issues with him (like seeming to peek at the camera) are irrelevant to this study.

The father of the charred family, and no one else, is shown in both of the other photos. That is, there's only one victim of this new horror shown, with the family at large only described. She also tells me that the family in question could be of three to five members. I'm not sure if this ambiguity is from the state of the remains or from some unclear communication.

But the father, as given, looks like a victim of the fires of hell. His left arm is charred to the bone, and his right shoulder exploded out in a boiling mass. Parts of his head have caved in, it seems, and his torso looks like orange styrofoam covered with a thin black crust. By the man's leg position and general toasted rigidity, I don't believe he was seated at death. So if this was the family in the car, he must have been alive long enough to get out of the car and stand up.

What class of weapon could do this?
Carbonized in the shelling, he was. That never happened before, but now it's happened to him and quite a few other people. Why now all of a sudden? Right when Predator drone strikes had begun over Misrata? Because these little punks are known to carry a missile called hellfire (how apropos for the "Great Satan" to use against Muslims!), and those do just about this to people. Time magazine reporting on a US drone strike against al Qaeda organizers in Yemen:

He was not just any man, it seems. U.S. officials think he was Kamal Derwish, a Yemeni American cited in federal court papers as the ringleader of an alleged terrorist sleeper cell in Lackawanna, N.Y., outside Buffalo. The putative American in al-Harethi's entourage traveled under the name Ahmed Hijazi, an alias used by Derwish. A positive identification may be difficult: the 5-ft.-long Hellfire turned the six people in the car into a mass of carbonized body parts. "They never knew they were in our sights," a U.S. official said. "And I can assure you, they never knew what hit them."

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1003721,00.html

(This description also argues against the father being packed into a car with others at the time)

A highly critical (and probably slanted) report on UAV use gives a third-hand account that includes young "collateral damage":

The social worker recalled arriving at a home that was hit, in Miranshah, at about 9.00pm (May 2009)... The drone strike had killed three people. Their bodies, carbonized, were fully burned. They could only be identified by their legs and hands. One body was still on fire when he reached there. Then he learned that the charred and mutilated corpses were relatives of his who lived in his village, two men and a boy aged seven or eight. They couldn’t pick up the charred parts in one piece. Finding scraps of plastic they transported the body parts away from the site. Three to four others joined in to help cover the bodies in plastic and carry them to the morgue. But these volunteers and nearby onlookers were attacked by another drone strike, 15 minutes after the initial one. Six more people died. One of them was the brother of the man killed in the initial strike.

http://www.for.org.uk/files/drones-conv-killing.pdf

Here, if Hala Jaber's description is true, we have what might be our first family or families and possibly others, charred by hellfire in Libya on day three of the robot war there. People scoffed when Deputy foreign minister Khaled Kaim called the drone decision a "dirty game" and said it would "be another crime against humanity."
http://news.sky.com/skynews/Home/World-News/Libya-Tribes-Could-Take-Over-Misratah-Fight-Against-Rebels-From-Army-Minister-Khaled-Kaim-Says/Article/201104415977735

On the Other Hand...
I have the feeling there's something else strange going on here that will be playing out in the next couple of days. The father's posture is strange - his whole left side is burnt to a crisp, yet his left arm is reaching for his right shoulder, rather than protecting his face. That exploded mess over there could be consistent with a previous injury he was concerned with at death, only to be torched later on, causing it to boil out like that. I'm not an expert in these things, but I can see a case to be made that he was dead before being carbonized.

There are many other victims reported, and the sheer number of such cases - probably more than a dozen going by the reports - is strange given the single UAV strike acknowledged. There might well have been other strikes not admitted, but public perceptions and civilian casualties are well-known factors from UAV usage in Taliban country. One would expect the coalition to begin this campaign with at least as much care as usual. I find it hard to visualize dozens of strikes killing whole families and others unless that's what they were aiming for.

These numbers and the purely civilian makeup, including children (the smaller briquettes), suggest someone intent on framing the drones had perhaps gotten their own hellfre missiles, or equivalent, and blasted some innocents. Or managed to identify a target that would be struck by them, and stuffed it with civilian corpses.

The Gaddafi regime has already been accused of this in this war, and it is the obvious beneficiaries of such a ruse. Even if the world media refused to buy the trick (they would refuse), the Libyan people might, and might then move to end this war, at least in the west, with an enraged human wave on Misrata ... or something like that.

But conversely yet again, the outside world (with their fighter jets and such) will be buying something else. And it will be perhaps the gravest allegation yet - Gaddafi is carbonizing families just to give the West a black eye. The very fact that the trick wouldn't work on us, and could only backfire, might suggest that someone is framing them to seem to be framing the coalition. That would never be widely believed, and admittedly, it is convoluted, and requires a sophistication of thought the rebels haven't shown much of yet. But it does fit with the pattern I've seen of Tripoli being framed for horrific things, in this war and before.

We need facts here, now more than ever. Solid, non-tweeted, facts about when and where and how these people died. Somehow I doubt we'll get them.
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Update April 27: Below I will link to any articles discussing this curious turn. So far, I seem to be at least two steps ahead of the crowd, and no one else I can find has put it together yet.

Why Misrata Matters

April 25 2011
update May 18

Note: Below I failed completely to note that Misrata is a major port, serving a large surrounding area. The port being in rebel hands and the surroundings in government control is a central gripe behind the "tribal threat" of late April.

Misrata (alt: Misurata, Arabic: مصراتة) is Libya’s third largest city (after Tripoli and Benghazi), boasting in peacetime about 550,000 people. Considered Libya’s commercial capital, it lies in the west of the country about 130 miles east of the capitol Tripoli. [1] With the de facto rebel capitol Benghazi itself no longer in immediate danger, Misrata has become the new focal point of the Libyan civil war. To hear mainstream news accounts, this would seem to be from the humanitarian crisis there. However, the real reasons behind the West's desperation to "save" Misrata are certainly more strategic than altruistic.

A Crisis of Disputed Size in the Western Holdout
It was among the amazing number of Libyan cities, east and west, that fell to rebel control within just a few days of the revolt’s start on February 17. This flash of activity was much more violent and pre-planned than the world public realizes, but that was needed to seed the impression that the whole country had “voted” by popular action to secede from the capitol.

After the initial shock of this unprecedented mutiny, the loyalists in the army and within the “liberated” cities re-grouped with an early-March roll-back. In general, rebel support was too weak to last in the west, and caved easily, and by the 19th rebel control was limited to their de facto capitol Benghazi and points eastward. The only exception to this rule was vital and sizable Misrata, then and for the last month the only western city even partially held by rebels.

With its switched-off electricity and water, sometimes severed supply lines, and the flight of thousands unwilling to fight, the city has become much less vibrant, to the say the least. On top of that, there's the siege: neighborhood-scale fighting, tanks, snipers, and mortars and rockets launched from afar. It's been described by rebels as a living hell, with "unimaginable carnage," hospitals overflowing, bodies piling up uncounted in the streets. Rebel pleas always cite among those killed indiscriminately women, children, and the elderly, in every single explosion.  It's been said Gaddafi is flattening the city, strangling it, and intends to slaughter every person in it.

However on April 10, Human Rights Watch released information on Misrata showing something less inhuman than all that:

According to Dr. Muhammad el-Fortia, who works at Misrata Hospital, medical facilities have recorded 257 people killed and 949 wounded and hospitalized since February 19, 2011. The wounded include 22 women and eight children, he said. [2]

Dr. Alan J. Kuperman, a respected scholar of humanitarian interventions, cited this as evidence that "Moammar Khadafy is not deliberately massacring civilians but rather narrowly targeting the armed rebels who fight against his government" ("narrowly" being relative under the circumstances). Since the fighting there started nearly two months earlier, he finds from HRW's numbers "of the 949 wounded, only 22 — less than 3 percent — are women. If Khadafy were indiscriminately targeting civilians, women would comprise about half the casualties." [3]

In the roughly 45 days since the seige began, 257 is only about six deaths per day, on average. That isn't likely a complete number, but no more likely to be very far off. In reality it looks less like a genocidal massacre than the six weeks of low-level but NATO-prolonged urban warfare it is. Even presuming a gross margin of unreported deaths, 400 or even 500 dead is really not that high - at most about 0.1% of the population. If the government were trying to kill "as many people as possible," with this much time to have done it, they are failing badly.

The Key to the Whole of Libya
Misrata’s fate has become second only to Benghazi’s. But as with the capitol, the motivation to maintain the third city is not to prevent a slaughter of innocents, but for two interlocking geo-strategic reasons.

One reason is, essentially, the city's location. Benghazi holds the key to Cyrenaica (the region from there eastward), which has remained in rebel hands since the end of February. But as the western outpost, Misrata holds a partial key to the whole nation. It's the last geographic bastion of the illusion that this is a nationwide popular uprising, as opposed to an East-West civil war. The latter, but not the former, could be settled with partition, an answer that makes sense now (any other option will leave substantial numbers of people under the rule of now-hated enemies and "traitors"). But the rebels and their western sponsors want to take the whole country, and so both are quite intent on keeping Misrata in rebel hands.

The other reason to the same effect is the city's size. Gaddafi is fully in charge of only one of the tree top cities (Tripoli), with #2 undeniably lost and #3 contested. As a piece in Bloomberg Businesswek noted yesterday:

Rebel control of Misrata would leave Qaddafi in charge of one major city, Tripoli, W. Andrew Terrill, a research professor of national security affairs at the Strategic Studies Institute of the U.S. Army War College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, said in an interview. “If the rebels have Benghazi and Misrata, they’re looking like a viable force and a legitimate government” and it could make a stronger case for other nations to join France, Italy and Qatar in recognizing them, Terrill said. [6]

And finally, a more immediate consideration, again location-based - when and if the rebel are ever able to attack Tripoli itself, it would be from Misrata, not Benghazi. After the putative pullout of April 23:

Colonel Ahmed Omar Bani, the rebel spokesman, dismissed reports of progress in Misrata."It is a disaster there," he said. "Kadhafi is not going anywhere. Misrata is the key to Tripoli. If he lets go of Misrata, he will let go of Tripoli. He is not crazy enough to do that."

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1381068/Hundreds-dead-bodies-streets-city-reduced-rubble-Full-horror-Misrata-siege-finally-emerges.html

Human Shields?
Clearly something extraordinary is driving the rebels of Misrata to stay in that "hell" with their families, to reject each offer of truce or negotiation, and maintain the city as both a war zone and a buffer against legitimate government counter-attack. Any attempt to re-impose order with armaments is deemed unacceptable, since the fighters have situated themselves in a city stuffed with civilians. That is, they're using themselves and their families, in a sense, as human shields.

And when Gaddafi's forces aren't willing to deliver horrible enough atrocities, the rebels or someone sympathetic will fake the most incendiary crimes for them. Children targeted by snipers in Misrata widely claimed, but only "proven" by a highly dubious x-ray image that's been presented now in connection with at least two separate children who don't seem to have been all-but-killed as they should be.

Mid-April did see a brutal new offensive, with a few dozen more killed in rocket attacks on Misrata, as usual including women, children, and the elderly. [4] Cluster bombs have reportedly been found. The harbor was attacked again. The rebels predicted a total slaughter would finally befall them without more NATO involvement soon.

What they really mean is Misrata will no longer be a rebel town, but the coding helps. The leaders of the US, UK, and France, who happened to be meeting in these same bloody days, jointly denounced, among other things, the “medieval siege” of Misrata. And these pleas finally allowed them to make some new decisions on a core realization that all three nations have agreed on for four decades now - essentially, Gaddafi must go. "It is impossible to imagine a future for Libya with Gaddafi in power," they lied jointly on the 15th. [5]

Nonetheless, NATO air strikes fell off notably and stayed low-key, for fear of civilian deaths, as government forces pulled themselves fully inside the city. The same situation the rebels had exploited for weeks, when it's protecting the Libyan army, is unaplogetically called "using human shields." This has created the impression that they are snatching civilians and strapping them to their tanks, tying NATO's hands while they drive over piles of young children.

So a decision was made to bring in the drones, well-known for differentiating between civilians and combatants (??) and then the whole situation shifted. (see Misrata: the Tribal Threat)

Sources:
[1] Wikipedia. Misrata. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Misrata
[2] Human Rights Watch. "Libya: Government Attacks in Misrata Kill Civilians." April 10 2011. http://www.hrw.org/en/news/2011/04/10/libya-government-attacks-misrata-kill-civilians
[3] Kuperman, Alan J. "False pretense for war in Libya?" Boston Globe. April 14 2011. http://articles.boston.com/2011-04-14/bostonglobe/29418371_1_rebel-stronghold-civilians-rebel-positions
[4] "Rocket barrage hits Misrata, NATO says Gaddafi must go" Times of India, April 15. http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/middle-east/Obama-Sarko-Cameron-seal-deal-Oust-Gaddafi/articleshow/7996431.cms
[5] http://www.libyafeb17.com/2011/04/letter-on-libya-by-obama-cameron-and-sarkozy/
[6] http://www.businessweek.com/news/2011-04-23/u-s-drone-hits-libyan-target-nine-killed-at-syria-funerals.html