Turkish drone strike targets an oxygen facility in al-Qamishli
...as confirmed in Turkish state media footage
On December 23rd Turkey launched a new round of airstrikes targeting Autonomous Administration and SDF sites in response to the deaths of twelve Turkish soldiers, killed in clashes with the PKK in Iraqi Kurdistan. While I will address the extent of these attacks in upcoming newsletters I’d like to highlight the open source information available with regards to one such strike in particular.
Late in the evening of December 25th local media reported that an Turkish drone strike hit a medical oxygen facility in the city of al-Qamishli, knocking it out of service.
Photos from the scene show damaged oxygen tanks bearing USAID logos.
Video published by ANHA locates the oxygen facility on the grounds of a local dialysis center which also suffered damaged within the strike.
Photos published the next morning by North Press show the two pole barn structures that housed the oxygen center to be located behind the dialysis center.
Via some quick searching online, as well as consulting later reporting on the strike, I was able to identify the center seen in the post-strike imagery as one opened in late 2021 in al-Qamishli’s ‘Alaya (علايا) neighborhood.
The latest satellite imagery available on Google Earth was taken in August of 2022 and does not show the oxygen facility structures in the yard behind the dialysis center.
On December 26 Turkish state media outlet TRT Haber published a two minute video showing eleven drone strikes reportedly carried out by MIT against “PKK” targets.
The fifth clip in the video shows the site geolocated above as the dialysis center. The pole barns constituting the oxygen facility not visible in the August 2022 satellite imagery are clearly seen to be the target of the drone strike.
ANHA has reported the facility to be the only operational medical oxygen facility in the Jazirah (al-Hasakah) province and was opened two months earlier. This has caused some confusion as to the location of the facility and strike, as a USAID-funded oxygen facility was opened by the Jazirah Canton Health Board in al-Qamishli during December 2022. That facility was located in the courtyard of the Jiyan Covid-19 hospital, on the northern outskirts of the city. It’s currently unclear to me whether that facility is still operational or if it was replaced by this one in the southeastern ‘Alaya neighborhood.
What is clear is that this is yet another instance of Turkey targeting vital civilian infrastructure in northeastern Syria under the guide of ‘counter-terrorism.’