Alleged Chemical Attack, April 7, 2018/Massacre house

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The massacre house as seen from the outside
Locations of Douma attacks according to VDC
Layout of the Douma massacre house

Location

Alleged inhabitants

See also Alleged Chemical Attack, April 7, 2018/Witnesses‎

Floors

Roof

Seen from above, the building is a normal rectangle shape, but the roof has an H shape, with the inset middle areas facing north and south being balconies cut into the top floor. So the "roof" at these spots is over the third floor, not the fourth. The south-facing balcony has a front wall (so from the street it looks like a complete floor), but it has no ceiling. The north balcony apparently has a wire-frame awning over it, and perhaps a wall, but these were damaged in the impact event likely prior to April 7. The alleged gas cylinder impact is on that north balcony, atop an apparently pre-existing hole down into the third floor.

4th floor

3rd floor

4-7-18 Scene floor 3.jpg

2nd floor

4-7-18 Scene floor 2 bodies.jpg

1st floor

4-7-18 Scene floor 1 bodies.jpg

Cellar

Chlorine cylinders

Roof damage

This description below, I believe, refers to the cylinder on the bed, not the cylinder which was reported after Russian visit in the 'massacre house' detailed on this page. This is slightly confusing as the report covers both cases, and end of report with the description below actually switches several times video footage between those two different cases. However the green man saying words below is literally standing near the bedded cylinder, so I guess he is talking about it, not the other one on a different roof. Tv Zvezda article summary Russian servicemen exposed yet another fake video about a chem. attack in East Ghouta , where a local resident had a balloon with chlorine placed right onto the bed. --Resup (talk) 10:31, 29 April 2018 (UTC)

Was about to cut the end part at least and explain so in reason for editing, but since we have mis-placed talk here... agreed. Distance from hole means the other scene, over to the bed. That would be some horizontal angle for a helicopter drop, a kind I just called out here. Also the bed would be smashed. So I presume they MEANT the thing came in fairly steep, bounced off the floor, tumbled 270 degrees and landed on the spray-painted bed. And this could likely all go somewhere else. --Caustic Logic (talk) 13:08, 29 April 2018 (UTC)
  • В постели с хлором: российские военные разоблачили поддельную «химатаку» в Сирии (In bed with chlorine: the Russian military exposed the counterfeit "chemical attack" in Syria) - Alexander Peshkov, TV Zvezda, April 26, 2018 (video)
    According to Sergei Kikot, the deputy chief of the troops of the RKhBZ, when inspecting the remains of the broken roof, a rocket shank was found, which, apparently, caused a break in the ceiling. In addition, Russian servicemen do not exclude the possibility that the hole in the ceiling was done manually, since scrap was found in the entrance.
    "The authors of the fabrication apparently brought the gas cylinder from the street, as indicated by the chips and traces of dragging along the floor tiles. The cylinder itself was not damaged. The valve is not torn off and is only slightly opened for constant gas bleeding. These facts testify to the staged actions of persons who implement an order conducive to destabilization of the situation in the region," Kikot said.
    He also stressed that the ballistic examination showed that the hole in the roof and the location of the cylinder are separated by such a distance that it excludes the version of the cylinder dump from a height of more than two thousand meters, on which the SAR helicopters operate.

Fire

A mysterious fire was started in the third floor room beneath the gas cylinder at some time after the impact or staging of the scene; the blackened material is all on top of the rubble, and not vice-versa. Smoke from this stained one corner of the room up to and across the ceiling, out the impact hole, and along the underside of the gas cylinder besides some, apparently, escaping through a vent to escape through a damaged spot. There's little reason to think this fire happened spontaneously - someone almost has to have decided to set it, sometime after the rubble had settled, and after the chlorine cylinder landed or was set in place, as it may be.

The possible reasons for this fire being set aren't clear, but it's possible the fire could generate enough heat to melt the fusible plug in the valve assembly (as argued at MMM blog). This is designed to melt in a fire well before the danger threshold for the pressurized tank to outright explode. Once melted, it would allow chlorine gas to pour out a fairly rapid rate. As note in that article, the marks of this fire are already visible before the activists in gas masks take their earliest videos. If the strangely white cylinder seen in the night-time attack videos is genuine, it suggests the cylinder was releasing gas at the time, causing the underside to freeze and cover with frost (a peculiar and known effect called auto-refrigeration). The smoke stains will already be made, hidden at the moment under a blanket of highly reflective frost. So we have impact event, tank landing or planting, then a fire set, then gas being released in a video of about 11pm or earlier, where 35 bodies are also seen.