Re-Considering the IIT's Nine Unsolved CW Cases
Nov, 2019
(rough, incomplete)
Among the alleged chemical attacks in Syria the OPCW's new "Identification and Investigation Team" (IIT) plans to review, two were on the same day - 18 April, 2014. They don't necessarily relate past that - one had 4 fatalities, the other none at all, etc. - but it's one excuse to cover two at once. One of these (Al-Tamanah) I had looked into a bit, and the other (Kafr-Zita) not really at all, until now.
Al-Tamanah
I looked into this one due to its having fatalities reported - it's either the luck of the draw that someone dies, or the plan of the massacre managers. Either way, it's a more serious allegation, and a better place to research. I didn't find a lot past the victims, a named family of four, were IDPs (displaced). This is the strange norm for the fatalities in these spring, 2014 attacks - in three of the four fatal incidents, those killed were reportedly IDPs, and primarily women and children. And two of those four happened in the same town of Al-Tamanah. Here I've looked a bit deeper into the one they've revived for the IIT to consider (the other seems to have been forgotten - that's explained along the way below).
From OPCW FFM report S/1230/2014 (pdf):
* 5.45 The members of two families, each consisting of four people, died shortly after separate attacks (in Al-Tamanah) involving the toxic chemical.
* 5.48 Members of both these families were IDPs who had taken refuge in Al Tamanah.
* 5.46 During the attack in the night of 18 April 2014, the father, mother, and two teenage children (a boy and a girl) died. The parents had died almost immediately after the attack. The two children, who were in a critical condition, were referred to hospitals outside the Syrian Arab Republic for better medical management and died at the referral hospital.
The other of those fatal attacks was on 22 May, described similarly in that report. I left it out here as not relevant to 18 April, but later OPCW reports leave 22 May out of everything from 2016 forward (see below). This 18 April incident also seemed to vanish in 2016, but unlike the May incident, this one was eventually revived for the IIT to review.
Some more information comes from a Hanin Society Islamic-oriented "health" NGO, affiliated with White Helmets, etc. They're a primary source cited in the relevant OPCW reports, having run a clinic in Al-Tamanah that vouches for a few chlorine attacks there, including this one.
* Hanin Society FB post 1: Friday 18\04\2014: One of the cases injured as a result of the bombing of chlorine gas and was treated thanks to God at the field medical point of hanin society (then a lot of religious appeals)
* FB post 2: The first cases evacuated by the assembly's staff from the bombing place with a mail containing chlorine gas Abu Mohamed Soussi and his wife and children, displaced from the city of khan Sheikhoun to Tamanaah. He and his family were turned to the hospital, died and his family there due to severe lung (damage?). More than \ 70 / cases were injured in this night with the symptoms of chlorine gas and most of them were ambulance at the association clinic and the hardest cases were transformed into brothers in tel mines and funeral.......
* Post 2 comes with an active but dim video seeming to show a middle-aged Mr. Soussi, still alive but laying mostly still, with a very red face and neck. That can happen from severe coughing, among other things.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=--BEZRo5XFI
VDC lists 3 victims with Notes: "IDP, a father and a mother and their son killed due to exposure to chemical and toxic gasses by the government force helicopter shelling."
* Amina Mustafa Iskandar, Adult - Female married with 2 children, from Khan Sheikhoun.
* Abdul Naser Hasan al-Sousy Adult - Male (aka Abu Mohammad)
* Mohammad Abdul Naser Hasan al-Sousy Child - Male video - specified as Amina's son. active video - screen grab at right. Little in the way of visual signs I can make anything of (yet), but pink spots on his shroud could mean some bloody discharge, as from severe caustic gas exposure. Or it could well be other things.
* Girls are often listed at VDC later than others or never, reason unclear. No girl appears in their database, not even listed differently or later that I could find. But the sources were clear the daughter also died, and I'm sure that's true. Just how is another story...
Of an original five cases that were harder for the OPCW's Fact-Finding Mission to solve, 18 April in Tamanah was one of the two they did not drop as "inconclusive" with blame left unclear (Gamba interview). So it was taken as clearer than those other three. Of the two, 21 April in Talmines was found to be half-fake, half-Assad crime, so good enough. That incident needs no IIT review. But this case apparently wasn't as strong as that (at least half-fake) one, and never was settled, so it's in their docket.
S/1230/2014 was unclear about the specific incident details and credibility. It mostly relates the general pattern of details that applied to all attacks in Tamanah - five clearly reported. Incident-specific details only come up in a few spots, with none for this day except the note of fatalities. For reference, a table in S/1230 lists the five incidents reported there. This was reportedly the most serious as far as affected people: 70 patients!
"A sketch listing the impact points is provided in Appendix 10." Impact 2 - apparently meaning this event - hit a ways east of the first one, about 150m from the "medical unit." Note impact #4 (22 May) isn't clearly labeled.
The incident could well have been revisited in the strangely-named and hard to find report S/2016/738 (24 August, 2016 - pdf), but it isn't. Therein it lists ten "cases under investigation, as follows"
(a) Kafr Zita, Hama governorate, 11 April 2014;
(b) Kafr Zita, Hama governorate, 18 April 2014;
(c) Talmenes, Idlib governorate, 21 April 2014;
It continues, but stays chronological, somehow skipping this second 18 April event - with fatalities. It comes up nowhere in the report. The date comes up, but only in relation to the Kafr Zita incident about which "the Leadership Panel was close to having sufficient information to reach a conclusion on the actors involved and recommends further investigation of the three cases."
That S/2016/738 report does give some insights on what might be wrong with the 18 April incident in Tamanah, by highlighting issues they had with two other attacks there, which ARE considered:
* For the incidents on 29/30 April, "The Leadership Panel determined that there was insufficient information to confirm or to exclude the possibility of a chemical attack and that there was contradictory and insufficient evidence to draw a conclusion on the actors involved." (cited reasons: "There are discrepancies in the statements made by witnesses and the descriptions of the event are inconsistent," with some insisting there had been no chemical attack. And furthermore, "this incident has been considered by experts to stem from an attack with conventional munitions.")
* For the 25/26 May incidents, "The Leadership Panel ... determined that there was insufficient evidence to draw a conclusion on the actors involved and the modality of the use of chemicals as weapons in this incident." (cited reasons: "Several witnesses stated that, since April 2014, “false” chemical weapons alerts had occurred frequently at non-regular intervals and that no chemicals had ever been used as weapons in Al-Tamanah" - this apparently was mentioned in connection with this incident, but doesn't seem to reflect on it in particular. "Other witnesses reported an unexploded “barrel bomb” that leaked chlorine. There was insufficient evidence to corroborate that testimony, however.")
* Both of these also notes "There is scarce relevant information about all incidents in Al-Tamanah. No flight movements could be established by the Mechanism."
In short order, JIM head Virginia Gamba was declaring on 30 August (6 days after that report came out) "we cannot get sufficient information, or that there is information that is too contradictory for us to be able to continue with" those May incidents and one from April, "so there will be no further investigation in these three cases"
Kafr Zita (11 April 2014);
Al-Tamanah (29 to 30 April, 2014)
Al-Tamanah again (25 to 26 May, 2014).
The 18 April incident isn't mentioned in that 2016 report, so any problems with that case got to avoid being listed. And as noted above, the 22 May incident is also not covered. By mid-2016, both incidents with fatalities had dropped off the radar here, with no explanation I've seen. Now, reviewing that list of five Tamanah attacks: 5 and 3 were put to rest with no acceptable answer expected. #4 was just dropped with no explanation. #1 - and #2 apparently - were also dropped for a while and never resolved, but both are now in the IIT's list to review. At best two of five might be resolved, but so far it remains at zero.
Kafr-Zita
S/2016/738: "The incident on 18 April 2014 around 2230 hours is listed in the FFM as the fifth attack with toxic chemicals in Kafr Zita, with 35 patients."
"In relation to the cases of Kafr Zita (18 April 2014) ... the Leadership Panel was close to having sufficient information to reach a conclusion on the actors involved and recommends further investigation..."
Rough points for now:
- ? Nusra alleged firing, and/or house blown up, but contested
- strangely same story as for April 11 - genuine new report or some kind of mix-up?
- 2 bombs, hosp. + football field, removed, smaller containers
- mysterious hospital attack
- football field crater problems
Impact #2, football field
- the crater said to be from 18 April 2014. 300 cm in diameter and 100-110cm in depth. An external expert stated that this kind of crater could result from a barrel bomb with a cylinder filled with chlorine dropped from a helicopter at high altitude and hitting the ground orthogonally or somewhat obliquely.
40. Another external ballistics expert stated that the large detonation pit diameter, in combination with the shallow depth, suggested the munition had detonated at the surface or directly beneath the surface. The large diameter and geometry of the detonation pit suggest a large calibre mortar round (120 mm or more) may have hit and detonated at the filmed site. However, it cannot be excluded that (the leadership's preferred story was true after all) … barrel bomb ... helicopters … created this crater."
Chlorinated compounds were found in the soil, levels not specified.
“The crater arising is somewhat larger than the practical maximal predicted for [a barrel bomb filled with chemicals] … the inner gas cylinder is quite heavy and pointed it may be expected to penetrate deeper than the predicted value. There may also possibly have been an additional explosive charge in the bomb. If this would be the additional main contributor to the cratering it would be expected to have been of the order of about 2kg of TNT-equivalent. This is judged to be too much if resulting from detonating cord present in the bomb only, but could well be the result of the chlorine gas streaming out violently from the pressure vessel in bomb after it impacted and penetrated into the ground.”
A crater halfway caused BY the gas itself, in a high-pressure spray... it seemed possible to them.
41. No further witnesses identified by the Mechanism could provide information to confirm that the remnants in the pictures had been removed from the crater at location #1. The munition could not be linked to the impact location and crater through image analysis either.
42. One witness stated that the explosion at location #1 was large and people initially thought it was an attack with a conventional munition. “The smoke was yellowish/orange in addition to the dust caused by the explosion.” Another witness stated that the explosion at location #1 was “very big” and that it could be heard from one village to another. This witness described the cloud as being 50-60 m high, spreading quickly because of wind coming from the west.
Hospital Impact and Stories
Location #1
19. A witness indicated that one barrel bomb impacted within a 50 m radius of the Eastern (No. 6) hospital. The Mechanism identified the location of the Eastern (No. 6) hospital as the reference point in two videos retrieved from open sources. The location was confirmed by a witness and the Government of the Syrian Arab Republic.
20. No further information is available on the crater at this impact location and it was not possible to corroborate this information.
Munition
Location #1
27. No information.
Damage and effects
Location #1
43. Unknown.
They did hear "One witness specified that tens of people were suffocating from the impact in the football field and people near the second impact place (close to the Eastern hospital) were suffering from shortness of breath and suffocation, among them medical staff in that hospital." But it seems the hospital-area impact Location #1 was left unknown, no remnants, no images, no details. Chances it lined up any better: slim.
Ruth Sherlock, The Telegraph, 29 Apr 2014: "On the April 18 [sic] a barrel with chlorine in [sic], lobbed from a helicopter at night, landed so close to the village hospital that the doctors and nurses themselves became the casualties." A video at Syrian Archive kind of suggests the bomb landed inside the hospital. No damage is seen, but there's a loud hissing inside, and not outside. People inside and out tend to wear gas masks, improvised or regular, and/or they leave. A patient who's hard to move (long pins in his shattered right arm) is left for a while in a gas mask, carried out to van only later. A bizarre scene. A W77 truck drives by, FWIW.
The gas tanks would presumably be releasing oxygen - the sound is loudest on the room with 2-3 blue cylinders - one is linked to its devices, one might be open. There's a cracked window in the same room the badly wounded man is left next to. So they'd say the gas from nearby crept in therough cracks like that. It had pooled up so badly outside that it seeped in so badly inside that, despite the extra oxygen flow, it was intolerable and everyone had to flee.
Alternately, there's nothing really wrong here, or likely a chlorine cylinder was opened inside the building. There's no visible gas anywhere, but it's harmful at levels where it's still invisible.
What this might suggest is a major release of some chemical - perhaps chlorine or a mix involving it - very near, right behind, or possibly inside the hospital. The truck marked 77W might be related to that; these marking W77, etc. have no certain meaning, and are seen around randomly, but have been noted especially around chemical attack incidents in Idlib and Hama provinces in 2016/2017, often transporting the dead, the displaced, bulk bedding, perhaps kidnap victims … and often seeming connected to Jabhat al-Nusra activities. One of them carried the bomb and suicide bomber used to kill dozens of displaced civilians (and facilitate the kidnapping of others) in the infamous 2017 Rashidin massacre (Wikipedia). See mystery of the W77 trucks where no sightings this early were noted.
Symptoms, etc.
…
From S/2015/138, 25 February 2015, a table relating the variance in symptoms reported in the different towns - what the 5 for Kafr Zita refers to needs review, in the face of more incidents there than 5, let alone total patients …
Syrian Government and Alternate Accounts: Wrongly/unfairly considered
First, reviewing the claims via similarity to those relating to the 11 April in Kafr Zita, just one week earlier - it's almost suspiciously like a total replay:
18-4: "The SAAF conducted an air strike against an observation post of the Nusrah Front or an affiliated group in the north-eastern part of the town" AFTER the fighters "had launched an improvised explosive device from there, at the tip of which a gas cylinder had been attached. After the rocket had been fired, it emitted an odour and a thick, white smoke. The group exploited the situation and produced videos, alleging that SAAF had fired shells with chlorine gas."
18-4: "A different description ... the Nusrah Front fighters had used mortar shells filled with chlorine."
vs.
11-4: "another witness,... When a helicopter flew in the direction of Kafr Zita, armed men fired a so-called “hell-cannon” in the direction of the town. Yellow and white smoke emerged, and the
witness smelled a bad odour and experienced difficulty breathing. At the hospital, other patients experienced the same symptoms."
(note: timing with a helicopter flight is smart, realistic. Compelling account. Hell Cannon is a kind of mortar, also an improvised device that might be able to fire a large gas cylinder, if it were all set up right. All 3 accounts could describe the same thing, but they're presented as suspiciously conflicting.)
18-4: "... the SAAF also targeted the house of a person affiliated with a specific armed opposition group that was used as depot for explosive devices. When the house exploded, a noxious, green gas was emitted."
vs.
11-4: "the house of a Nusrah Front-commander [name redacted], which was used to manufacture explosives and car bombs, was targeted. Upon impact, the house exploded and the odour of chlorine spread through the town, injuring and killing a number of IDPs in Kafr Zita. Six Nusrah Front-affiliated fighters from a neighbouring village were in the house and died in the attack. Several barrels of chlorine had been stored in the house."
(this literal story is not likely to be true, but checked against VDC fatalities - no match on 11 April, but maybe the next day, if altered: 4 fighters from a ways north ((Maghara, north of Maarat Numan)) were killed by warplane shelling, but the VDC heard - perhaps just to undermine a government story regarding this sensitive kind of operation? - they were hit while they were driving, up in Aleppo province. It happened "at night," they heard, which is not the usual time warplanes operate.)
18-4: The opposition, with the help of a local physician, created false evidence that blamed the chemical attack on the SAAF.
vs.
11-4: 17. The Government of the Syrian Arab Republic and another source claimed Nusrah Front "fabricated a video that portrayed false evidence." "the Government of the Syrian Arab Republic and that source claimed that a physician who was a witness to the FFM was involved in the fabrication of evidence."
18-4: ""medical staff in that hospital" were "suffering from shortness of breath and suffocation""
vs?
11-4: "At the hospital, other patients experienced the same symptoms."
Next, the dissimilarities between 11-4 and 18 April events:
11-4 dropped as inconclusive because (in summary) the alleged barrel bomb sites were from explosive weapons instead (in 3 cases), the narratives based on their being CW bombs were inconsistent, and there were compelling counter-narratives of terrorist staging, including with a "hell cannon," that had fresh damage appear on satellite views to (partially) corroborate them, which the FFM noted in both of 2 cases.
vs.
18-4: We'll see. So far, the same wrong-damage problem seems to apply, the counter-claims are almost the same, there are the same kind of agiven areas to check for fresh damage, but for this incident, the JIM found no matching damage to support those claims, in either two given locations.
I checked all the given areas to form my own opinion. For 11 April, everyone agrees the alleged hell cannon chemical shell impact point is heavily damaged (it was pretty explosive as well, it seems … maybe not that chemical after all...) and the alleged home of a Nusra Front commander seemingly sustained damage at this time. But for 18 April, the JIM took a different approach and managed to miss the supporting evidence, as it appears to me anyway. So I'll have to explain it here.
Location #3 (said to be Nusra Front observation post / forward base bombed by Syrian aviation after a chemical weapon was fired from here):
"23. The Government of the Syrian Arab Republic provided the location of the farm targeted by the SAAF at N35.3843222° E36.6145250°."
"24. Comparison of open source satellite imagery from before and after the event did not show signs of an impact that occurred in this area. An anomaly that looks like a crater was already present in September 2012."
I bet that face of Jesus was already there too. Nice try. Is there no damage? Worth checking Google Earth images: The possible crater they refer to - if they're morons - looks like a large natural depression going back forever. It's there if blurry in the earliest image from 2004. Looking for anything relevant, I check May 1, 2014 - about 2 weeks after any 18 April retaliatory strike - and see at least 2 differences from last image from Sept. 2012. That is a huge window of time, but this looks pretty fresh upon first view.
More important, at the house on the indicated farm, 58m NW of their pin, it seems fresh damage also appears. The smaller portion at the south end, maybe a kind of patio (for observation?) appears to have a flat roof in 2012 that gets rather dimpled prior to May '14, and seems to stay dark and recessed like that for years after. I'm not certain this proves the claim true, but it's not clear the FFM even noticed this difference. They certainly give no reason to take this as some irrelevant optical illusion.
Location #4
25. The Government of the Syrian Arab Republic provided the location of the house which it had also targeted at N35.3721417° E36.6025000° in front of the Big Mosque.
26. Comparison of open source satellite imagery did not show any significant damage after, compared to before 18 April 2014. However, better pictures of a higher resolution would have been required to confirm. The Mechanism has requested high resolution military imagery, but did not receive any.
The pin is on the roof of a corner building in the south center of town, across the street from a large mosque. About 2-5 meters from the tip of the pin, depending on the view and the skew, is a distinct dark spot. That could be a small hole from the kind of bomb that just punches through, then explodes inside to kill terrorist leaders present. Better images would be nice though, since there's something in about the same spot in 2010, and two views from 2004 and 2011 (the only other ones prior to 5/1/2014) are too blurry to help. To me, the 2010 view seems to show a 3-D object that casts a shadow, whereas the mark that appears a few meters north seems like a black hole no matter what the angle of sunlight in each later image (that initial object would be destroyed by the bomb as it was replaced by the hole). But then, considering the shifting angles, perhaps that is the same thing the whole time, just looking different between views. This point isn't fully clear.
Side-points: The tree top that moves too much from its from-above outline in green - the roving dark blob - I gather that's just taller than it looks, and really magnifies whatever skew everything else has. So unless that object in 2010 is quite tall (it isn't - shadow), it should not shift far enough to be in the red circle, even though the tree shifts about like that. 2010 light object and 2014 dark dot are two different things.
FWIW the mosque across the street has suffered hits too by 1 May - a large hole punched in the middle, a smaller one on the south face of its dome. More large holes appear over the years into 2017 - stories will differ over that. And the corner house in question retians that dark dot until it seems to be flattened prior to images of Sept. 10, 2018.
---
"48. There are contradictions, insufficient information and tampering with impact sites. Therefore, the Mechanism could not reach a conclusion on this event."
Someone must be confident these issues can be worked out to decide on blaming the bad guy regime yet again.
The Bomb:
f/c
Michael Kobs has done some work on the visuals here …
The day's barrel bombs, per Syrian Archive videos:
One is full of gray powder + no chlorine cylinder inside, landed just inside someone's door? They're shoveling out the powder content from the rolled out bomb and its crater. Maybe to re-use? Description: "The video shows people wearing protective masks, who are allegedly members of the Mohammed Sawt al-Haq Engineering Battalion, while they are removing the contents of a metal object claimed to be the remnants of ammunition used in the attack. It can be noticed that one of them stops working, removes the protective mask and coughs." It's more of a gagging cough or a retch than an irritation one, however (in my opinion).
The other is clearly special, with a red-painted gas cylinder inside the sleeve. Location unclear, but seems to be outside and at night. Its valve assembly seems to be missing. The detonation cord is intact suggesting it never detonated (?). It looks like someone manually unscrewed the valve already, and that pink gummy stuff was a seal beneath it?
To be sorted:
50. Too little information was available on topography, obstacles, locations, population density and characteristics (age, gender, health conditions). Therefore, a simulation of the plume dispersion did not yield tangible results.
Tangibility was the problem, was it?
Medical effects
49. The FFM reports of 35 patients in relation to the incident. No death was recorded. A witness stated that approximately 30 people were affected and went to the hospital. Two other witnesses said that there were around 100 people injured in total. One witness specified that tens of people were suffocating from the impact in the football field and people near the second impact place (close to the Eastern hospital) were suffering from shortness of breath and suffocation, among them medical staff in that hospital.
The Leadership Panel’s assessment
51. The Leadership Panel examined the existing information and evidence regarding the incident in Kafr Zita on 18 April 2014 and determined that the SAAF executed air strikes in that area on that day. However, the Leadership Panel could not confirm the use of barrel bombs because the remnants of the device allegedly used had been removed and could not, at this stage, be linked with certainty to impact location #2.
52. The Leadership Panel determined that this case merits further investigation.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Comments welcome. Stay civil and on or near-topic. If you're at all stumped about how to comment, please see this post.