NEWS
How New York Times Reporters Proved Russia Bombed Syrian Hospitals
Source: The New York Times, By Christiaan Triebert, Evan Hill, Malachy Browne, Whitney Hurst and Dmitriy Khavin. 13th Oct 2019, updated 14th Nov 2019.
The Times obtained thousands of air force recordings, which reveal for the first time that Russia repeatedly bombed hospitals in Syria.CreditCredit..Macro Media Center
The New York Times recreated a day of airstrikes using video evidence, flight logs, witness reports and thousands of previously unheard Russian Air Force communications. See the full report here.
Times Insider explains who we are and what we do, and delivers behind-the-scenes insights into how our journalism comes together.
One of the hospitals in this article, Kafr Nabl, appears to have been bombed by Russia again, on Nov. 6. This Times Insider explains how we investigated the bombing of it and another Syrian hospital in May.
“Srabotal,” the Russian pilot said.
The Russian phrase, which directly translates as “it’s worked,” was confirmation that he had released his weapon on a target in Syria: Nabad al Hayat Surgical Hospital near the town of Haas in Idlib Province.
Beginning in 2017, The Times’s Visual Investigations team has tracked the repeated bombing of hospitals in Syria, an apparent strategy of the Syrian military and Russia, its ally. More than 50 health care facilities have been attacked since the end of April in an offensive to reclaim Idlib Province from militants opposed to Syria’s president, Bashar al-Assad, according to the United Nations’ Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights.
[Read and see our investigation into Russia’s bombing of Syrian hospitals.]
Our team combines traditional reporting with advanced digital forensics to understand major events in conflicts that Times reporters can’t access on the ground, like a chemical attack in Syria or an American airstrike in Afghanistan.
Finding visual evidence of Syrian hospitals that were badly damaged was not hard. We collected hundreds of photos and videos from Facebook groups and Telegram channels, two places on social media where Syrian journalists and citizens had shared hours of footage. Along with medical and relief organizations, users on those platforms sent us even more documentation, including internal reports and unpublished videos.
While Russia has long been suspected of being behind these hospital bombings, direct evidence of its involvement was difficult to find, and Russian officials have denied responsibility.
During our investigation, we obtained tens of thousands of previously unpublished audio recordings between Russian Air Force pilots and ground control officers in Syria. We also obtained months of flight data logged by a network of Syrian observers who have been tracking warplanes to warn civilians of impending airstrikes. The flight observations came with the time, location and general type of each aircraft spotted.
Could these communications, each only a few seconds long and riddled with seemingly indecipherable military jargon and code words, be direct evidence of Russia’s violating one of the oldest rules of war?
Times reporters spent weeks translating and deciphering code words to understand how Russian pilots carry out airstrikes in Syria. This spreadsheet shows part of the communication between one pilot, identified as “48,” and the ground controller, “Fuse,” during a strike on Nabad al Hayat Surgical Hospital.Credit...The New York Times
We needed to verify and match the Russian communications and flight logs with the other airstrike information we had gotten, including satellite images and doctors’ witness statements. Deciphering the communications and finding the precise time and location of each hospital strike proved to be the key.
We had months of data but decided to focus on May 5 and 6, when four hospitals had been bombed. Each was on a United Nations-sponsored “deconfliction list” meant to spare it from attack, according to the World Health Organization.
We eventually saw patterns in the data. The clearer the picture got, the more damning it became for Russia.
We then organized and merged all of this information into a spreadsheet database. A data analyst in our Graphics department, Quoctrung Bui, designed a tool that allowed us to filter and search thousands of data points by time and place.
For each airstrike, we examined the evidence recorded at the time of the attack: Were Russian Air Force aircraft in the air? Were they spotted near hospitals? What were they talking about on the intercepted audio?
In the case of Kafr Nabl Surgical Hospital, which had been bombed repeatedly and restored with help from the W.H.O. in March, local news coverage and incident reports placed the time of the attack at about 5:30 p.m. on May 5.
Witnesses are often central to estimating timing, so we spoke to a doctor who was working at Kafr Nabl when it was hit. He said the hospital was first struck at 5:30 p.m., with three more airstrikes following five minutes apart.
Local media activists started filming after the first strike. Four of them caught the next strike on video. Did they all show the same airstrike? Or multiple ones — perhaps even four, as the doctor described?
To find out, we needed to know whether the videos were filmed in Kafr Nabl. Using Google Earth, we labeled landmarks, like a minaret and a water tower, and kept track of the nearby hills and mountain ridge.
Times reporters used Google Earth Pro to plot airstrikes, hospitals and visual evidence on a map. This is a view of the town of Kafr Nabl in Syria. In the foreground is Kafr Nabl Surgical Hospital, and in the top right corner, faintly visible, is Nabad al-Hayat Surgical Hospital. Both were bombed by the Russian Air Force, a Times investigation found.Credit...Google Earth Pro
This practice, known as geolocation, can determine the exact site of a photo or video by using landmarks and geographical features and corroborating them with satellite imagery. We managed to geolocate all of the videos and determined that the explosions all happened at Kafr Nabl Surgical Hospital.
We then analyzed the explosions and smoke patterns. After going through each video frame by frame and lining up several videos next to each other, we realized we had footage of three different strikes from multiple angles.
Videos filmed by media activists in Syria capture the moment of an airstrike on Kafr Nabl Surgical Hospital on May 5, 2019. The World Health Organization-supported hospital was bombed four times in eighteen minutes.Credit
An analysis of the shadows in the video allowed us to estimate the times of the strikes. But to get the exact time, we asked local journalists and news agencies to send their footage so we could use the files’ metadata to see when each strike hit the hospital, down to the second: 5:36:12, 5:41:14 and 5:49:17 p.m.
We knew that at least three, possibly four, airstrikes had hit the hospital. But we didn’t have a culprit. The flight logs and videos of the aircraft above Kafr Nabl that day didn’t have the key either. Both Russian and Syrian air forces had been active. It was a perfectly ambiguous situation: We didn’t know who bombed the hospital, but it must have been one of the two.
But the Russian Air Force communications provided the clearest evidence of Russia’s responsibility because we had the exact time of the explosions from the video metadata. A Russian pilot released four weapons at those very times.
The pilot, who identifies himself as “72,” says “Srabotal” at 5:30 p.m. He repeats that five minutes later, at 5:35 p.m. — and at 5:40 and 5:48 p.m. Four weapon releases in all, each about five minutes apart and about some 40 seconds before the time of impact we had calculated from video metadata.
Because the hospital was dug deep under its original building after repeated bombings, only one person was killed. Many others were injured.
We saw three other instances when the Russian Air Force “worked” on hospitals over a period of 12 hours in early May. The evidence was clear in each case. Less than a day of air activity in a four-year-old Russian air war paints a damning picture for a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council.
Reporting was contributed by Quoctrung Bui, John Ismay and Haley Willis.
Graphics by Dave Horn. Video credits: Halab Today TV, Hadi Alabdallah, Euphrates Post (via Facebook) and Syria Call.
Follow the @ReaderCenter on Twitter for more coverage highlighting your perspectives and experiences and for insight into how we work.
Christiaan Triebert is a journalist on the Visual Investigations team, which combines traditional reporting with advanced digital forensics. @trbrtc
Evan Hill is a journalist on the Visual Investigations team, which combines traditional reporting with advanced digital forensics. @evanchill
Malachy Browne is a senior story producer on the Visual Investigations team, which practices a new form of explanatory and accountability journalism combining traditional reporting with advanced digital forensics. @malachybrowne
Affecting chronicle of life in war-torn Aleppo
Source: The Guardian, Mark Kermode, Observer film critic, Sun 15 Sep 2019 08.00 BST
There is a scene in the middle of this powerful, harrowing and deeply human documentary about life under siege in Aleppo, Syria, that perfectly encapsulates its mixture of horror and hope. In the terrible aftermath of yet another airstrike, a pregnant woman with broken limbs and shrapnel in her belly is brought into a makeshift theatre in al-Quds hospital. An emergency caesarean brings her critically unresponsive child into this world of carnage – a terrible, pitiable sight, made all the more unwatchable by the certainty that nothing so vulnerable could possibly survive such violence. Syrian citizen-journalist and mother Waad al-Kateab, whose frontline footage was seen in Channel 4 News’s Inside Aleppo reports, keeps filming, determined to bring such daily atrocities to the attention of the world. And then, as the spectacle seems too cruel to endure, a miracle occurs, offering a gasping glimpse of redemption amid this unfolding hell.
With footage as raw and dramatic as this, it’s a credit to composer Nainita Desai that her score remains restrained and understated throughout, emphasising subtler themes of endurance and empathy, while gesturing gently toward the possibility of hope – of love – even in the midst of tragedy.
Syria’s hospitals bombed: UN Security Council calls for inquiry
Source: Aljazeera English, 30th July, 2019
How the UN failed to save Syria’s hospitals
Source: Aljumhuriya, 24th July, 2019
A Syrian doctor says the UN’s plan to stop attacks on hospitals in Syria has failed. If it can’t be fixed, it should be abandoned.
In northwest Syria, a colleague of mine named Morhaf works as a doctor in a health facility supported by our organization, the Syrian American Medical Society (SAMS), which provides medical care in some of the most dangerous regions of the Syrian conflict. In my capacity as head of advocacy in Turkey, I recently asked Dr. Morhaf to conduct an interview with a large human rights NGO to talk about the ongoing attacks on health centers in his area by the Syrian regime and its Russian ally. His response was highly telling. “What did the hundreds of interviews we gave about Aleppo with human rights NGOs and investigation bodies change? Did we stop attacks on health centers?” he asked me.
We did not, is the answer. Since the outbreak of the Syrian conflict in 2011, more than 570 attacks on health centers have been reported. Over 800 health workers have been killed in these attacks.
Moving underground
Forced to fend for themselves, local medical staff inside Syria have proven strikingly creative in finding alternative methods of protecting their facilities. They have built hospitals underground, or used basements or even caves as makeshift health centers. While these don’t always meet international standards for medical facilities, they’ve succeeded nonetheless in decreasing the risks of attack. So convinced were we, as the regional staff, of the benefits of these underground hospitals that we began trying to raise funds from donors for their construction. Though the local staff went along with this out of necessity, it was never their first choice; they were always clear that the goal ought to be protection and accountability.
Failed “deconfliction”
To that end, we began considering participation in a UN program intended to reduce risks to medical practitioners in war zones. Under this “humanitarian deconfliction mechanism,” as it’s known, the geographic coordinates of health centers (as well as other vital civilian infrastructure, such as schools) are shared with the UN, which in turn passes them on to the warring parties, in order that they—theoretically—avoid targeting the locations in question. Given the systematic bombing of health facilities in Syria, it was always going to be difficult to convince our colleagues on the ground that this mechanism might work, but we eventually reached the stage of having no alternative options.
Sure enough, in 2018, there were six attacks on “deconflicted” health facilities, while in 2019, fourteen of the thirty-eight attacks on medical centers between 26 April and 22 July alone struck deconflicted sites. There have been no consequences for the perpetrators, who are known to all parties, raising inevitable questions about the value of the mechanism.
No will, no way
What is the reason for so abject a failure? It’s certainly not a lack of information. There are at least two full pages on attacks on medical facilities in each one of the reports put out by the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Syria, attributing responsibility for the majority of attacks to the Syrian regime. The World Health Organization’s website hosts a dedicated page documenting attacks, which demonstrates that they are far more systematic in Syria than in other conflict zones. Leading human rights NGOs such as Human Rights Watch, Physicians for Human Rights, and many others have similarly documented systematic attacks on health facilities in Syria.
There is more than enough information out there; the problem is there is still no will to stop the perpetrators. Instead, we see only cosmetic solutions providing ostensible success stories for state donors to convince their domestic parliaments they are doing good.
Are there alternatives?
In spite of all the above, I do believe that, even within the deeply flawed institutions of the international community, with all their bureaucracy, power imbalances, and political dynamics, there are still things that can be done for Syria. The UN could take several steps to stop these attacks. Its Commission of Inquiry (COI) should be much quicker in investigating attacks on health centers—to date, all its reports have come out months after the crimes have been committed, making them useless during the time periods that offensives are actually underway. UNOCHA should provide its “deconfliction” data to both the COI and the International Impartial and Independent Mechanism in Syria (IIIM). Similarly, both UNOCHA and the COI should be given access to the UN’s Operational Satellite Applications Programme (UNOSAT), in order to compare satellite images before and after reported attacks. The IIIM should immediately launch investigations into these attacks, and work with war crimes prosecutors around the world to hold perpetrators to account.
Dr. Mohamad Katoub is a doctor formerly based in Damascus’ Eastern Ghouta suburb. He is the head of advocacy in Turkey for the Syrian American Medical Society (SAMS). He tweets @MhdKatoub.
One Building, One Bomb: How Assad Gassed His Own People
Source: The New York Times, By MALACHY BROWNE, CHRISTOPH KOETTL, ANJALI SINGHVI, NATALIE
RENEAU, BARBARA MARCOLINI, YOUSUR AL HLOU and DREW JORDAN
Syrian officials say there wasn’t a chemical attack. What really happened? This is an interactive report best viewed on The New York Times website.
On April 7, a chemical bomb was dropped onto the balcony of a multistory building in Douma, a neighborhood near Damascus, Syria. At least 34 people were killed.
The United States and its European allies blamed Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and launched airstrikes to punish him.
Syrian officials still deny that bombing took place, and their Russian allies said that the attack was staged.
The investigation uncovered many pieces of evidence that contradict Mr. Assad and his allies.
The dents in the bomb’s nose, the lattice markings and the rigging that could be seen in the debris are evidence that the bomb was dropped from an aircraft. Because the Syrian military controls the airspace over Douma, it would be almost impossible for the attack to have been staged by opposition fighters who do not have aircraft.
The black corrosion is evidence supporting the charge that chlorine was used in the attack. The corrosion is similar to that which is caused when metal is exposed to chlorine and water.
Sources: The New York Times pored over dozens of videos and photos of the attack with academics, scientists and chemical weapons experts. We partnered with the research agency, Forensic Architecture, to create a virtual model of the crime scene and analyze how damage to the bomb’s casing related to the debris it scattered. We also scoured a portion of the visual evidence with the investigative group, Bellingcat.
Additional work by Larry Buchanan.
We live in Aleppo - Here’s how we survive.
Source: Washington post: Omair Shaaban, 21st Oct 2016
ALEPPO, Syria — There weren’t any bombs today, or the day before. That’s good, because it means you can leave your apartment, see your friends, try to pretend life is normal. Still, you don’t know when the attacks will resume or how much worse they’ll be when they do.
The war here has been going on for more than four years. Hundreds of thousands of people have fled, and thousands more are dead, including many of my friends. My wife and I are among about 250,000 people trapped here in the besieged eastern section of the city. If you want to stay alive in Aleppo, you have to find a way to keep yourself safe from explosions and starvation.
Here’s how.
First of all, to survive the many different kinds of airstrikes, shells, rockets, phosphorus bombs and cluster bombs, you’ll need to live on the lower floors of a building. They’re less likely to be hit than the upper floors are. When a smaller bomb lands on top of a building, it often takes out just the top two or three stories. A lot of people are living on the lower floors of buildings whose upper stories have been destroyed. Many of these residents moved into apartments left vacant by people who fled the city. My home is on the second floor of a six-story building, so I might be safe. But I might not be: Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s regime and the Russian military launched a coordinated assault on Aleppo last month, and in the most recent airstrikes, the jets have been using a new kind of bomb that demolishes the whole building.
When the bombardment is heaviest, you’ll start to worry that you might lose more of your friends. Call them to check in on them. If you see them, when you say goodbye, tell them: “Take care of yourself. Maybe I won’t see you again.”
You’ll be able to tell which days are safer. If there are peace talks going on in Geneva, there will be fewer bombing runs that day. This past week, the regime and the Russians announced a cease-fire. But that has made everyone afraid — we don’t know what’s going to come next. Maybe the attacks will be worse than before when they start again. That’s what happened last time. And the scouting planes continue flying overhead, day and night, even during the cease-fire.
It’s so easy to lose your mind here. You might go out one day to look for food and come back to find that your building has been destroyed and your family killed. I’ve seen people standing in front of bombed-out buildings, screaming and crying in disbelief. More and more people have lost their homes, and now they’re living on the streets asking for money. Before the war, they never imagined they would be beggars.
If you aren’t killed by airstrikes or shells, your big worry will be food. Before the siege, there was enough for everyone. But now a lot of poor people don’t have enough money to buy food, because there aren’t jobs anymore, so every neighborhood has young volunteers whose responsibility is to get food and other supplies for their communities. Families that still have a father are lucky: His mission is to get food and other supplies every day.
Maybe you’ll try to grow vegetables in your garden. In my neighborhood, people are growing eggplant, parsley and mint. Many gardens have become burial grounds, though, because there isn’t room anywhere else to bury dead bodies after four years of war. But if the alternative is starving to death, you might not mind eating food that’s been grown among corpses.
People here are suffering because we want freedom. Before the war started, I joined a demonstration against Assad’s regime — and I was arrested, beaten and detained in a tiny cell for five days. The longer the demonstrations went on, the more violent the regime’s reactions were. Eventually, the Free Syrian Army tried to launch a revolution, and the war began.