I- Introduction:
Al Ghanto town is located near Talbisa city in northern Homs Suburbs and the number of its inhabitants is almost 15 thousand individuals. The town, which is under the control of armed opposition, also shelters a great numbers of displaced residents from Homs’s neighborhoods.
In this report we document the alleged Russian shelling on a residential building where Al Assaf family was sheltering in.
Our team conducted interviews and investigations with residents, local activists and eyewitnesses; in addition we included two of the interviews in this report. We analyzed footages and images we received and crossed referenced these outcomes with information about the air strikes from pro-Russian media outlets. All eyewitnesses spoke in Arabic as we also explained the aim behind conducting these interviews where some of them preferred their real names to be kept confidential, as we also kept a record for all the contact details to all eyewitnesses.
Our investigations proved that the targeted building was a shelter for displaced residents who were related to a member of an armed opposition group. However, he was not present in the building during the shelling; as the region is also free of any military presence for any armed opposition group during the attack or before it.
What is documented below constitutes the bare minimum of what we were able to record, as it also does not tackle the social, economical and psychological dimensions of this crisis.
Russian authorities deny all these accusations and state that all its targets were on military locations that belonged for ISIL or terrorist groups. Therefore, SNHR demands the Russian authorities to investigate this shelling incident and the prior ones and we are ready to present all required evidence and information.