Aleppo University Attack

Twin explosions rocked a university in Syria's largest city of Aleppo on January 15, 2013, the first day of exams, killing a reported 87 people, students and others, and wounding many more.

The following page is a stub for the moment. Better sources and so on will come later. The topic is quite famous and well-known, so we won't offer the basics like death toll at the moment.

A Jet Strike or Not?
The answer to this central question, apparently, is "not."

Jet Witnesses Speak
Activists were always quite clear they saw and heard was a jet dropping the bomb/firing the missile. But video evidence and expert opinions to the contrary clearly outweigh their politicized words. Mohammed Sergie wrote:
 * Residents of Aleppo, some who live only a few hundred meters away from the scene and are vocal opponents of the revolution, were quick to point out in Facebook and Twitter posts (below) that a fighter jet fired two rockets at the University, then circled back a few minutes later to drop the third bomb. People living in government-controlled areas of Syria can’t inspect the aftermath of such violent explosions and aren’t allowed to film in public, which explains the dearth of photo and video evidence from the scene.

The tweets might be instructive. Read in order, they say there were loud blasts surrounded, apparently, by silence, and then aconsensus was forged that there were also jet sounds.
 * I heard the sounds, what was that ?
 * It’s like a rocket blast in my bedroom
 * Explosions between the humanities department and the dorms at the university
 * No, those weren’texplosions, they were air strikes, I heard them clearly.
 * I heard the planes as well.

"Edward Dark," an Aleppo resident using a pseudonym, "who used to support the revolution but now calls on the Syrian military to retake control of the city," came out blaming the government here in more Twitter messages:
 * Mate, nearly everyone in Aleppo saw it, there can be no doubt. A regime jet swooped low and fired rockets there. End of story
 * I myself was driving up the road, just a few miles away from the jet strike. I clearly heard a jet fighter swooping, then a blast

A Twitter user called Ahmedosios said:
 * A plane hit with two shells. We saw the plane with our own eyes. I am not going to doubt my eyes and believe regime media.
 * When the plane roamed above the university following the shelling, the university guards and soldiers told us, 'hide, the plane is back!' 

A student calling himself Simon told CNN:
 * "I was on campus when I heard a plane over head from a distance," Simon recalled to CNN. "Suddenly a loud explosion erupted just 50 meters away at the gates of the College of Architecture," he said. "Since many roads in Aleppo are blocked, this is one of the few roadways that is open for those traveling though Aleppo."

A doctor at the hospital treated the wounded, and was angry at those who “deny the accounts of witnesses to the massacre.” He didn't see the attack himself, but spun an imagined (fabricated) narrative:
 * I can’t comprehend the malevolence of a pilot who guided his plane in broad daylight in front of 30,000 witnesses, calmly firing riockets and remaining over the target, proud of his achievement, before returning for another run three minutes later … then he waited for his political leadership to fabricate narratives.

Video and Expert Assessment
But the video never seemed to show this jet, or to have captured its noise.

A second video surfaced on January 22 and quickly made waves with its new view from the front/west side of the stricken dorms, showing the apparent projectile and the massive blast. This spurred a new and more detailed round of analysis. At least two prominent media research people took the evidence to experts, and returned with two quite different conclusions.

James Miller of Enduring America has run two articles now since Jan.23: one "proving" a jet attack and the other sharing "definitive/conclusive evidence" of the jet attack. The first article didn't have much to say except that the government claim (which no one can provide a direct quote for, and which doesn't seem to exist) that "a car bomb" was responsible was put to rest. The second link is more relevant. The "definitive evidence" is an unspecified number of "officials" and/or "arms experts" he spoke to, every one of which, with reasons specifically held-back, believes this was a fighter jet attack.
 * There is now conclusive evidence that the explosions at Aleppo University were caused by an airstrike, not a ballistic missile strike and certainly not a car bomb.


 * Well-placed Western government officials in the region, with access to "technical" information about the strike, have told EA that they "can say with 'certainty' that the missiles were delivered by a jet, flying at altitude".


 * The officials were specific that their evidence showed that the explosion was not from a ballistic missile fired from the ground or a bomb dropped from the aircraft.

"The officials would not divulge the basis for this information, but a source for EA indicates that Western government have used sophisticated radar, deployed in Turkey and other countries in the region, as well as information gathered from classified "listening posts" that monitor signal interceptions and pilot chatter.

Miller took these findings to the second source, as a counter-point offered in a comment (no response). This was a Jan. 23 article by Robert Mackey on his New York Times blog The Lede. This too made issue of disproving car bombs, but otherwise refuted what activists had said.
 * According to Joseph Holliday, a former Army intelligence officer and a senior analyst at the Institute for the Study of War who studied the clip for The Lede, the video strongly suggests that a missile struck the university. “There’s no jet noise before or after the strike and only missiles would be supersonic – the ripping noise at the end is just the missile ripping through the air,” he wrote in an e-mail. “Add to all that the size of the blast definitely seems more like a ballistic missile than a bomb.”

Holliday suggests it was fired by the government ("the regime didn’t mean to target the university, but their Scuds just aren’t accurate enough and they screwed up – big time."
 * Mr. Holliday showed the video to another analyst at the Institute for the Study of War, Christopher Harmer, a former naval officer, who observed: “I am 90 percent confident that is either a Scud or a large surface-to-surface rocket – that is much bigger than a Qassam or Katyusha. Might be a Fajr-5 rocket.” He arrived at that conclusion, he wrote, by the following process of elimination:


 * R.P.G.? No — explosion is too big. Mortar? No — explosion is too big for the size of mortars in theater. Artillery? No — explosion is too big for any of the artillery pieces in theater. Also, if it were fired by artillery, they would have heard firing. Airdropped bomb? Possible, but unlikely. No visual indication of jets in the area.

Mackey also cites his friend and NYT colleague C.J. Chivers “this now appears to have been a military strike, with ordnance that the Free Syrian Army does not have,” as far as he knows, suggesting quite strongly it must have been a government strike after all. Chivers has been looking at missile craters for a while, and noted that, whatever model is being used, they "simply do not seem to come near their targets in many cases — they miss by a kilometer or more. And that may be what happened here."

However, there were two strikes, precisely near each other. Did the government "screw-up big time" in the same basic direction, twice in a row? Rather, as the government noted, this follow-on attack is more similar to the work of terrorists (if usually using car bombs, not rockets/missiles)

Syrian Government Investigation
(forthcoming)

Al-Nusra Front Responsibility
The Al-Qaeda-affiliated designated terrorist group Jabhat Al-Nusra has not claimed responsibility for this attack, and probably never will. Nonetheless, it has been suspected by both sides. For example, [the Guardian's Middle East live blog reported: "I’ve just been speaking to my colleague Martin Chulov, who has been in Aleppo today and yesterday. Martin said the suspicion among Aleppo rebels was that the opposition jihadist group Jabhat al-Nusra was responsible for yesterday’s rocket attack on the university, which killed at least 87 people."

British ITV's International Editor Bill Neely reports from Damascus on June 16, on the government's explanation:
 * It said initially two rockets were fired from a rebel-held area of the city and hit the university. [...] The government has now changed its position. Syria's Information Minister has just given me another explanation. Omran al-Zouabi says the Islamist extremist group Jabhat al Nusra is responsible. He says the twin explosions a few minutes apart, the intent to kill large numbers of people, the targeting of a government building and the capability of the group to do such a thing, all points to them as the most likely perpetrators. Al Nusra does indeed go in for spectacular mass killings. [...] But al Nusra doesn't claim its attacks. Its policy is secrecy; deeds not words.

This blame is clearly speculative, and that's not neccessarily a changed story from the one he describes - "terrorists" is just more specific. Neely does seem to hint it was an Al-Nusra car bomb, as opposed to rockets, but it's not clear if that's his presumption or Al-Zouabi's claim.

There is more direct evidence of Al-Nusra involvement alleged. The following claims from Facebook are unsubstantiated, but worthy of note in case they're true: From Facebook (2):
 * "Al Nusra Front, the terrorist group deemed al Qaeda in Syria adopted, on its FB page the attack on Aleppo University. The post was then deleted 12 minutes later. The post says the attack was by a suicide bomber in a car filled with explosives, targeting Aleppo University, shabiha and a security base. Though it's still not confirmed what the University was attacked with exactly, Al Nusra Front appears to have been behind the attack."

...more
 * "Al Nusra Front, the terrorist organization deemed al Qaeda in Syria has basically just exposed themselves as being behind the Aleppo University massacre which left 82 people dead by distributing leaflets in Aleppo, threatening the people against sending their children to the university for exams prior to the attack on the University.
 * This is one of the leaflets calling for boycotting the exams at Aleppo university. Before the Aleppo University massacre, FSA said, "there will be no learning until the president is gone," and they tried to hold true to this threat. Education and independent thinking are a major threat to these radical groups and their sponsors."

Timing
On the local level, the attack coincided with the first day of final exams. On the geopiltical timeline, As Syria's representative to the UN Dr. Bashar Al-Jaafari pointed out,
 * ''""The terrorist armed groups in my country always take advantage of a Security Council meeting to perpetrate a terrorist attack inside Syria and this is indeed what happened today perhaps for the 10th or 20th time since the crisis in my country began,""

He was speaking at a Security Council meeting, on the day of the attack itself. (Youtube video). It was a special meeting in Pakistan, about "conditions that feed terrorism". This came one day after the Security Council received a petition to seize members of the Libyan government for ICC trial, over "authorities' failure to investigate and prosecute war crimes allegedly committed since March 2011." These, as noted, are usually committed right before or during UN Security Council meetings.

International reaction
The United States is appalled and saddened by the Syrian regime's deadly attack yesterday on the University of Aleppo," State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said.
 * http://www.middle-east-online.com/english/?id=56507

Russian FM says he cannot imagine anything more blasphemous than CNN’s accusation of Syrian regime of being behind deadly Aleppo blasts.
 * Lavrov hits out at US for blaming Syria regime for blasts

"SOHR holds the Syrian regime responsible for the Aleppo University massacre..."
 * https://www.facebook.com/syriaohr/posts/560068824022372

UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon: U.N. chief condemns Aleppo attack, says targeting civilians a war crime: "Such heinous attacks are unacceptable and must stop immediately. All combating parties in Syria must abide by their obligations under international humanitarian law," Ban said in a statement. "Deliberate targeting of civilians and civilian targets constitutes a war crime." He doesn't specify who he thinks is guilty of the war crime.

A Photo
http://imgur.com/Lsj8N "20 of the students in this picture died yesterday in an airstrike on Aleppo University" (group photo, alive and well) One comment offers "BTW the writing on top says" university of architecture engineering."

Unsorted Links
Collection of SANA Articles, Jan. 16:


 * "On the afternoon of Tuesday, January, 15th, 2013, the armed terrorist groups targeted the University of Aleppo with two rocket shells from al-Lairamoun neighborhood, causing the martyrdom of 82 students and the injury of hundreds"

Jerusalem Post:
 * At least 52 people were killed and dozens wounded on Tuesday in two explosions that rocked the university in Aleppo, Syria's biggest city, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said. Two explosions hit the university during the day while students were sitting exams. The cause of the explosions was not clear but the government and opposition activists blamed each other.

Guardian, Jan. 16:
 * The Russian foreign ministry has condemned the attack on Aleppo and blamed "terrorists" who oppose the government for the bombing, Reuters reports.

The death toll had been revised to 87 and climbing by the following day, when a triple car-bombing was reported (killing at least 22 at a military checkpoint) in Idilb, the next largest city in the north. Fox News