Attack on Red Crescent convoy in Urm al-Kubra/An answer to Bellingcat by PavewayIV

This is my critique of the evidence, analysis and conclusions drawn by the Bellingcat article Analysis of Syrian Red Crescent Aid Convoy Attack authored by Nick Waters and Hady Al-Khatib and published on the Bellingcat site Sep. 21, 2016.

= Bellingcat analysis: Introduction =

The opening paragraphs provide the tone of the rest of the article: Some known details, a true but pointless emotive remark about the attack being a war crime followed by a mis-attributed but supposedly incriminating set of remarks by the Russian MoD addressing their role and social media imagery appearing the following day. This leads to the thesis of the article, offered as such:


 * This investigation will use open source techniques to demonstrate that the Russian MoD and Syrian Government knew the location of the convoy. It will also show that it was not a fire that destroyed the convoy, but a sustained attack by air assets.

Assertion: Knowledge of location means guilt and Russia knew!
The first point about the Russian MoD and Syrian Government knowing the location of the convoy is hardly incriminating. I agree they both knew all along and well before the convoy was even underway - despite any subsequent drone surveillance confirming that. The Syrians, Russians and rebels knew because the Syrian Arab Red Cross (SARC) and the United Nations relief people TOLD them all exactly where the convoy was headed beforehand and got the required approval from all parties for the route/destination. It was traveling to a specific existing SARC aid distribution warehouse and health clinic in the outskirts of Urum al-Kubra, not some secretive location that could only have been discovered by surveillance drones and spy satellites.


 * The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs released this statement by Stephen O'Brien right after the attack, part of which clearly states: "...Notification of the convoy – which planned to reach some 78,000 people - had been provided to all parties to the conflict and the convoy was clearly marked as humanitarian..."


 * And this from the Amnesty International site: "The UN aid chief, Stephen O’Brien, earlier said that the convoy was travelling with all the necessary permits, and that all parties in the conflict had been notified of its route."


 * The Guardian reported "...After it entered opposition territory, it was monitored by Russian drones, a fact acknowledged by the Russian defence ministry, which had also been provided with precise GPS coordinates of the route to be taken and the destination, as per agreement with Syrian officials..."

There is no doubt Russia knew where the convoy was. Bellingcat seems to dwell on the availability of secretive drone-derived locations as some kind of proof of guilt when the route and destination where well-known by everyone beforehand, yet they curiously avoid mentioning this fact.

Suggestion that Russian statements regarding tracking/location were deceptive ignore context
There is also a secondary suggestion that the Russian Defense Ministry spokesman, Igor Konashenkov, was lying about 1) the Russian MoD knowing the convoy's location/destination, and 2) Konashenkov claiming only the rebels could have known where the convoy was. However, the quote is taken out of context without respect to the Russian Center for Reconciliation and their responsibility for monitoring the convoy. From Tass

"The Russian reconciliation center aims to assist armed groups in Syria in concluding ceasefire agreements, maintain the truce regime, control its observance and organize the delivery of humanitarian cargoes to civilians.


 * The center has existed since the beginning of the year and part of its mission is to monitor aid convoys, including this one. This responsibility with regard to the Urum al-Kubra convoy extended into neutral/rebel-controlled territory to a certain point, beyond which the rebel forces assumed responsibility to ensure safe passage of the convoy to the final destination. The Russian MoD was trying to express that they had fulfilled their part of the agreement for monitoring at 1:40 PM local time, and beyond that it was up to the rebel forces to monitor the convoy's further movement and protect it. The convoy (or part of it) was already at the warehouse by then, so it wasn't going anywhere - it was starting to unload.


 * The Russian MoD statement was widely mis-represented in the Western press as some feeble attempt by the Russian MoD to claim ignorance of the convoy's route and destination and additionally claim that only the rebels could have possibly known where the convoy was. Taking these statements completely out of context and failing to mention the Russian Center for Reconciliation and their assigned role, one would think the MoD's statements were indeed disingenuous. The MoD was, in fact, addressing their responsibility to monitor the convoy and the end of that responsibility at 1:40 PM - it was not an attempt to claim ignorance of where they clearly knew the convoy was located: at the warehouse.

Bellingcat is simply using evidence manufactured from poor journalism to suggest deception on Russia's part. This is used to reinforce their previously stated contention that Russia knew where the convoy was, therefore they must have bombed it.

Assertion: Russia lying about attack evidence
The remainder of the article's thesis regarding 'sustained attack by air assets' will be addressed in the sections below as they present their evidence.
 * I'll merely point out here that the Russian MoD had looked at the initial social-media (activist/White Helmet-provided) pictures when they made their comments about the appearance of the convoy. Those initial handful of pictures did appear to show nothing but burnt/damaged trucks and little of the surrounding area. The Russian MoD spokesman was speaking specifically to the accusations that Russian aircraft bombed the trucks. He (rightfully so) said the pictures they had seen at the time looked burnt, not bombed. He would not have made that exact same statement a day or two later when more and better-detailed pictures emerged.

Bellingcat is again presenting the Russian MoD's statements out of context and without regard to what pictures they had actually seen at the time - all this in an attempt to make them sound deceptive or defensive when they were (according to Bellingcat's analysis) already guilty.

= Bellingcat analysis: Context =


 * The information they present here regarding location/time is accurate and reasonable.

= Bellingcat analysis: Who knew about the convoy =

Bellingcat acknowledges that Russia knew where the convoy and warehouse was, then returns to the MoD statement of "...The Russian side did not monitor the convoy after this and its movements were only known by the militants who were in control of the area." Then offers this:
 * "...However, a comparison of pictures from the aftermath of the attack and the drone feed clearly show that the convoy did not move on: it was attacked at the location that the Russian MoD was monitoring..."

While presented as suspicious, the context is once again absent in their analysis:  Bellingcat has somehow interpreted Russia's subsequent monitoring of the warehouse area as suspicious and incriminating, rather than standard military stuff. This is used to bolster their argument that Russia knew = Russia guilty. I'm just completely missing their train of logic here.
 * There were two separate Russian drone 'missions' that day. One was the obligatory convoy monitoring by the Center for Reconciliation until it got to the destination warehouse. The Russian MoD says this occurred at 1:40 PM local. There was another 'mission' (or perhaps a second drone) that did a general reconnaissance of the area until around the local 6:30 PM sunset. While there is video of the warehouse/convoy at times, this (second) drone seems to wander about looking at the surrounding area for long periods of time. In other words, it's not intensely focused on the now-parked convoy and unloading process. It's doing what a recon drone does for any military and had an obviously different task than the dedicated convoy monitoring one. The Russian MoD reluctantly released that in their own defense after accusations that they were responsible for the bombing and the misinterpretation of the Center for Reconciliation statements. This is actually quite extraordinary - you would never see the U.S. military release their drone footage for anything other than self-promotion. Nonetheless, Russia offered it as "See - the aid convoy and warehouse were fine the entire time we were watching (even though we were not obligated to watch it). Whoever attacked it only did so after we stopped monitoring it" Bellingcat misses the entire Russian MoD motivation for even releasing the second set of drone footage and instead sees this as more 'evidence' that Russia did it.
 * Not sure why Bellingcat insists on hammering the MoD for the statement about only rebels knowing where the convoy was after it reached the warehouse. Russia did not expect it to go anywhere. The knew it didn't go anywhere. They were not literally suggesting it did go anywhere else - like to some secret rebel-only-known location. I'm curious if the translation itself was flawed. But even if it was perfect, I see nothing insidious in it given the context. This is far too much attention on a single confusing sentence considered out of context.

= Bellingcat analysis: What happened during the attack? =

The opening statement for this section is:
 * "The Russian MoD attempted to downplay the attack and link it to the rebels, with spokesman Igor Konashenkov claiming that it “strangely happened almost at exactly the same time as militants started a large-scale offensive on Aleppo”

I hardly find this to be 'downplaying the attack'. How about 'downplaying misplaced accusations of Russia's guilt' and suggesting the possibility that one of the other parties here might have been responsible. I'm getting the idea by now that even if Konashenkov would have just said "We have no idea who did it", then that would have immediately been proffered by Bellingcat as evidence of Russia's guilt as well. The rest of Konashenkov's statement is given as follows: ''“We have closely studied the video footage from where the incident took place and we did not find any signs of any ammunition having hit the convoy. There are no craters, while the vehicles have their chassis intact and they have not been severely damaged, which would have been the case from an airstrike… All of the video footage demonstrates that the convoy caught fire.”'' Bellingcat has no idea what video the Russian MoD has examined up to the time they made that statement. I'm assuming Russia does not yet have a time machine, so they were looking at some of the initial video/images on social media. My guess would be the night-time White Helmets video of the site, in which little of the actual damage could be seen. Bellingcat references a lot of media that came out after that, suggesting (once again) that Russia is lying about what Bellingcat can clearly see a day or two later. A series of images follow which proport to show "...Konashenkov’s statement is simply not true..."

Series of three nigh-time images showing a shallow roadside crater with debris

 * Labeled as Fig. 7,8,8a

Barrel bomb?
I guess these are suppose to prove the 'barrel bomb' reports. I'm no explosives expert, but I am just not seeing the crater that should have resulted from 200+ kilos of TNT impacting vertically at maybe 600 km/hr. If this was suppose to be a dud, then I'm not seeing any of the unexploded 200+ kilos of TNT nor remains of the giant welded-up pipe section they make these out of nor the large, crude fins they use. There's a very brief view of what looks like a piece of bent 6 cm or so pipe at the 1:25 mark in the source video. At the 1:29 mark, the narrator pulls out a circular dusty white piece of metal, which Bellingcat suggests is the front piece of a barrel bomb. This 'barrel bomb crater' is a few meters from the back of two heavily-damaged trailers, so something certainly exploded there. The last few seconds of this video pan across the street in front of the warehouse/aid station. The crater has been filled in (tan color) near the back end of the rightmost two trailers seen just before the video fades out. 200+ kilos of TNT? I think not. Whatever remained of the two trailers would be half-a-kilometer away.

Russian air-dropped munitions?
I don't know of any Russian air-dropped munition that would produce that meager of a crater (even if a dud). The debris isn't recognizable as anything Russian-bomb related, nor would I expect that big of anything that actually exploded to remain. If it was a dud, the White Helmets would have had video of the crumpled casing all over the internet by now. Standard Russian High Explosive/Fragmentation bombs are the OFAB-100/120 and OFAB-250/270. They are only fuzed for point detonation - they have to hit something first to explode. So without any proximity or air blast option, I would expect a distinctly cone-shaped crater of a meter or two in depth. And no miscellaneous metal chunks at the bottom.

Hell Cannon Propane Tank Bomb?
Of course Bellingcat would avoid examining this option because it would imply the rebels attacked the aid compound. Hell Cannon munitions are usually metal propane tanks filled with a crude explosive - usually prilled (little ball-shaped particle) ammonium nitrate, a common fertilizer in Syria, with other additives like fuel oil, aluminum powder or charcoal. They often contain nuts, bolts and nails as shrapnel. The tanks themselves are often constructed of two halves welded together. When they are used as a cannon-launched bomb, they hit on end with some kind of fuze (usually an old mortar fuze) in the center of the nose-end. The explosion rips the tank in half at the weld and flattens the front half against the ground or inside of it's shallow crater. It flattens like one-half of an orange peel would flatten: by splitting somewhere from the edge to the center. Kind of like the piece they dig out of the shallow crater in the video. The damage is pretty consistent with the blast from such a home-made bomb. In other scenes of the surrounding street, there appear to be a lot of what look like white ammonium nitrate prills but it's hard to tell for sure. Hardly proof it was one of these, but between a Barrel bomb, a Russian air-dropped munition and a Hell Cannon Propane Tank bomb - well, I'll go with the last one.

IED?
These are often made from prilled ammonium nitrate like the Hell Cannon bomb. I bring this up because the crater location is very close to where the front gate would have been. Maybe this was just a raid by rival jihadis and they didn't have a key for the front gate, so they used an IED 'opener'. The other damage to the trucks/compound could have been a battle for the booty.

Crater Conclusion
I don't know what it was, but I would have to at least think Barrel Bomb: No; Russian air-dropped munition: No.

Two images from inside compound showing heavy building damage

 * Labeled as Fig 9 and 10

What could have caused that damage?
Inconclusive. Something smaller that a barrel bomb but bigger than a mortar. Air dropped munition? Sure. Hell Cannon? Sure. IED? Sure.

Fragmentation-damaged truck

 * Labeled as Fig 11

Fragmentation damage?
It looks like. Which makes sense since this truck was facing the main gate crater/bomb. What I don't find credible is that if anyone in the Russian MoD saw this picture, they would claim otherwise. I have to conclude they never saw a detailed, daytime picture of all the obvious shrapnel damage when they made that statement. Another odd thing is that the particular sections that Bellingcat has circled in yellow on their analysis show obvious evidence of bullet holes. Shrapnel rarely makes nice, perfectly-uniform and round holes in patterns like that. An automatic weapon fired straight into the cab looks like that. The obvious question is: Who was shooting up the front of that truck either before or after it was burning? Another piece of evidence supporting the crazy jihadi looters theory and not conveniently explained by Russian aircraft or Syrian helicopters (helicopters shoot from above, not parallel to the ground like a human does).

Fragmentation-damaged car

 * Labeled as Fig 12

Fragmentation damage?
Obviously. Again, if the Russian MoD had seen this exact picture (with their time machine) then they wouldn't have made any remarks about no shrapnel damage. Shrapnel from any manner of bomb that exploded in the compound, so it's not conclusive as to type. This was the local SARC director's SUV and he was fatally injured in it during the attack. One additional thing I found odd is that the air bag is deployed. The compound blast was maybe fifteen meters away. I'm having a hard time picturing a bomb blast or shrapnel from the side of the car triggering the air bag. Not sure what that means, though.

Warehouse - Cardboard Boxes and Crater

 * Labeled as Fig 13 and 13a

Waht Happened During The Attack - Conclusion
I agree with the statements on obvious fragmentation damage.
 * "...Although something like a gas cylinder could cause some blast and fragmentation, the level of damage show here, and in a multitude of other photos and videos, indicates something much more powerful..."

I don't agree with the above. The propane cylinder bombs are a good 15 or 20 kilos of ANFO explosives. While not as powerful as TNT, they can still take down the brick wall of a two-story building and throw shrapnel 50 meters. If the explosion is less than ideal (often the case with home-brew munitions), then I would expect to find the un-burnt or partially-burnt explosive mixture like AN prills scattered about. These bombs also produce plenty of heat - enough to start plastic and textiles on fire. The White Helmet videos show almost everything burning before the big explosions, so that may not be significant. This alone is not proof that Hell Cannons or propane tank IEDs caused the damage, but it suggests that it was much more likely one of them than Russian air-dropped munitions.