Talk:Queiq River Massacre

Reuters has the main report so far, NPR links us to the/a video. Haven't watched it. Reuters says:
 * At least 65 people, apparently shot in the head, were found dead with their hands bound in a district of the northern Syrian city of Aleppo on Tuesday, activists said. The British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which says it provides objective information about casualties on both sides of Syria's war from a network of monitors, said the death toll could rise as high as 80. It was not clear who had carried out the killings.


 * Opposition activists posted a video of a man filming at least 51 muddied male bodies alongside what they said was the Queiq River in the rebel-held Bustan al-Qasr neighborhood of Aleppo. The bodies had gunshot wounds to their heads, and their hands were bound. Blood was seeping from their heads and some of them appeared to be young, possibly teenagers, and dressed in jeans, shirts and sneakers.


 * The Queiq River rises in Turkey and travels through government-held districts of Aleppo before it reaches Bustan al-Qasr.

Implication, they were killed in the government-controlled (last we heard) area, where all river banks are inaccessible to rebel trucks. Regime thugs dumped the bodies to hide them, forgetting the river flows right into rebel camera land next door. --Caustic Logic (talk) 13:43, 31 January 2013 (UTC)

The Lede: Boring
The Lede adds:
 * Gunfire echoed in the distance, and at the end of the clip the cameraman broke into a run. “A sniper is firing at us,” he said.
 * [SOHR] said 65 bodies were recovered from the river. The group estimated that 15 more remained in the water but could not be retrieved because of a threat posed by government snipers.
 * The Daily Telegraph, a British newspaper whose correspondent, Ruth Sherlock, was on the scene of the grim discovery, reported that residents pulled 79 bodies out of the river. A rebel fighter interviewed by Ms. Sherlock estimated that as many as 30 more bodies could remain in the water, but said they were impossible to retrieve because of nearby government sniper positions.
 * Snipers with a range of up to the river, from one side or another of this frontier flanked by both side. Please note that.

In short: "Piecing Together Accounts ... The rebels and the government have blamed each other for the mass killing, but Ms. Sherlock, of The Daily Telegraph, reported ... A rebel fighter interviewed ... taken to the riverbank by Free Syrian Army fighters ... They thought they had nothing to fear from the government, so they went to renew their identity cards..." Some detective work here. --Caustic Logic (talk) 14:54, 1 February 2013 (UTC)

Images and Location

 * Have not followed the story. Only saw one photo, river and bodies in the front, Aleppo in in the background, in what appears to be north. I thought areas south of Aleppo were in government control. Were the bodies found by rebels or by the government? -- Petri Krohn (talk) 19:54, 31 January 2013 (UTC)


 * Me neither. Quick Google image search shows quite a few people talking about it, even visually. Here are some --Caustic Logic (talk) 23:56, 31 January 2013 (UTC)


 * Syria 360 Foreign Ministry Calls on Security council to Condemn Jabhat al-Nusra’s mass Execution against Scores of Abducted citizens in Aleppo
 * More likely to condemn the reported Syrian air strike on children playing in the river, all of them Sunni. --Caustic Logic (talk) 23:56, 31 January 2013 (UTC)
 * Images - river is at low flow - I don't think they'd be likely to float far or fast.


 * image 1
 * image 2
 * image 3
 * image 4

Makes the link to the rebels' Orontes river body dump last year.
 * Friends of Syria Update on the Bodies in The River
 * image


 * The Lede (Liam Stack,not Robert Mackey: Piecing Together Accounts of a Massacre in Syria
 * The rebels and the government have blamed each other for the mass killing, but Ms. Sherlock, of The Daily Telegraph, reported that many of the dead were residents of rebel-held areas whose families said they disappeared after traveling to government-held areas.


 * video


 * ITV News (no scene report): Pro-opposition group reports 'massacre' in Aleppo
 * The location (?) on the map

here is the area on Gmaps, SW part of Aleppo. I thought it would be afternoon, but there's no clear spot fit if so low building near the bank north of/after the bend). this could be it, if it's instead early morning and the sun comes from that far north. It doesn't, rising already south of 90 degrees in winter. so no spot located yet. --Caustic Logic (talk) 00:47, 1 February 2013 (UTC)
 * I guess this must be it then, and its afternoon as usual. --Caustic Logic (talk) 00:52, 1 February 2013 (UTC)
 * Yeah, the last one is it. It explains all the images.� Here is the minaret visible at hard left in image "Aleppo river massacre.jpg." That one is shot around 11:25 am, +/- 17 min. The line drawn by that long, straight stretch of river is app. 294 degrees on the compass, and points buildings northwest, catching the late morning sun obliquely.The other photos are later, early afternoon, not timed yet. The earlier time is more important - by then at latest. they're on the bank opposite the Bustan Al-Qasr side. This is all downstream from whatever normal (gov.-held) districts the rebels cite, as well as downstream from a one-kilometer stretch that runs alongside the rest of this rebel-held district. --Caustic Logic (talk) 14:43, 1 February 2013 (UTC)

River Questions
Also note, for whatever it's worth, the neat row of bodies raises the question if they all stopped at the basic spot, then why? In the image at right, it seems there might be a wall, net, grate, or block across the river here, disrupting the surface just short of the last of the bodies. This is likely some kind of screen that maight be placed so often. Surely the loyalist murderers would know about these and realize there was a grate right at Bustan Al-Qasr. And apparently there were no others along the long float down here that stopped the bodies short of rebel cameras? Or, alternately, this is an unusual screen rebels set (to fairly precise measurements, apparently) to catch the bodies they set loose a little north of the bridge the night before. Then, they piled up like logs more or less end-to-end, and were pulled out like so. The fighters and their families stepped in with the right words and identity claims, the other activists swallowed their suspicions again and pushed that version, the media complied, etc. --Caustic Logic (talk) 15:01, 1 February 2013 (UTC)