Thread by @EliotHiggins

I've been reviewing the videos of the US raid in Syria that killed the new head of ISIS and there's some details that are emerging about the aftermath that might lend some credence to the US claims about a bomb being detonated.

I've only identified one video that shows corpses at the scene, and that was filmed at night. If you've seen the video with a grey splodge in the middle you'll know the one I mean (and if you have a splodgeless version please send it over).

Three corpses are visible. They're positioned on the ground opposite the side of the house that exploded, around the area marked on the map below.

One is an adult male. He has a similarity to the ISIS leader, but I wouldn't want to make a definite ID due to damage to his skull resulting. He doesn't appear to have been shot, and his arms is twisted off, so along with the skull damage an explosion might have been involved.

There's also a dead child, which I won't describe, and some very badly damaged partial remains of a person which definitely seems explosion related. So three bodies, with varying levels of damage indicating they were caught in an explosion.

There's many videos and images of the inside and outside of the building, and in the collapse section of the building there's no signs of the sort of fragmentation you'd expect from a munition, like a missile, from exploding.

The ceiling of the collapsed section is covered in blood, which seems pretty unusual if you consider the ways it could have gotten there. Then there's a low wall on a rooftop balcony area, marked in green below, which has blood splatter on it.

So it seems there's a possibility the bodies on the ground reached there after being blown off the roof top. In this video the bodies are identified as being the ISIS leader, his little boy, and his wife.

Now we've no way of independently confirming that, there's certainly a similarity between the male body and the ISIS leader, but his face is damaged, so I personally wouldn't want to say for sure.

But given we can see the bodies of the ISIS leader and his son are fairly intact, and the third body is badly damaged, it would logically mean his wife would have taken the brunt of the explosion, whatever the source of it was.

I'm really not seeing any indications of a munition being used, so it unless someone wants to point out something they think I've missed it seems like the scenario where an explosive was set off upstairs is most likely based on what I've seen so far.

If you want to take a look at the videos and photographs I've put together a Youtube playlist here:youtube.com/playlist?list=…

and you'll find plenty here and on Youtube searching for أطمة. There may be some NWS images there.

As @CalibreObscura points out, this might explain the source of the explosion, and the lack of casing would explain the lack of shrapnel. The source is well known pro-US website RT Russia t.me/rt_russian/909…

https://twitter.com/CalibreObscura/status/1489338331968245765

If you're looking at evidence from the attack @airwars has also put together a collection of sources. airwars.org/civilian-casua…

I'd also note a number of the videos contain interviews with witnesses that have yet to be translated, so there could be more information in those about what happened. youtube.com/playlist?list=…

One question I do have is why there's a fire in the below video? That fire wasn't burning in the video filmed at night showing the bodies, so it seems it would have been lit after the US raid.

This shot from the night time video with the bodies shows the same wall from the opposite direction, and there's clearly no fire there.

There's more information on the raid gathered from various sources here, including various witness statements

https://twitter.com/AKMcKeever/status/1489632735778025482