Snipers Aiming for fetuses in Aleppo: How real, and Whose?

[Caustic Logic]

I first posted the following couple paragraphs in the main Syria thread, but decided it merits its own space. I'd like to start with the x-ray, and expand into other evidence to see as clearly as possible what's actually happening to whom, where, when, and why. Obviously, not just pregnant women but all civilians shot by snipers wherever the recently reported stuff is happening. To whatever extent members here want to contribute to that, here's a thread.
---
The latest atrocity, have we discussed it yet? Sniping fetuses - in Aleppo, it seems but remains veiled - where there are probably 5x as many foreign-funneled terrorists as regime troops left, they spend their final days watching loyalist areas starve under food blockades and aim for different body parts for fun, hitting kids in the shoulder one day, pregnant ladies through the fetus the next.

And there's X-ray proof that's laughably fake. Sound familiar?

http://acloserlookonsyria.shoutwiki...e_Syrian_Conflict#Brutal_.22Games.22_In_Syria

Dr. David "Nott MI6" Nott is of particular interest to me.

For those needing a refresher of how child-sniping x-ray proof has previously been deployed in Libya to encourage intervention, see the images right above that section. This case, I fear, has a grim real side that one didn't, but at least a giggle-worthy bit of fakery is there too.

ETA: Details on the x-ray image source here. Not as fun is the visible-light post-partum photo you can link to from there of what they say is the same baby, skull apparently as intact as it seems in the x-ray, but dead. It says he and his mother were shot August 24 (apparently she lived). They were from Bustan al-Qasr, on the front lines of Aleppo, where all those dead bodies wound up floating in the still river in January (and other times), for example - near at least one infamous (regime?) sniper-plagued, rebel-controlled choke-point. Seems that's where Dr. Nott was working, though in a couple of interviews and a few reports, it's never specified just where in Syria he was.

 

[Caustic Logic]

It just hit me Winter is setting in again over Syria, with no solution in sight for the millions plunged now into hell.

Anyway, what might be useful here, sorry to be a bummer, is if someone else were willing to take an anti-"regime" position I jut can't anymore, and start by linking us to the sources and giving your assessment. Someone following the news should already know this story, the x-ray and Dr. Nott being the main parts. If not, use my link as a starter.

Or something. I'm too busy to bother volunteering for a monologue of any length, and there's little point to it anyway.

 

[Mycroft]

I think it's very unlikely snipers are actually targeting fetuses, but I can easily imagine in a war zone where there are snipers shooting civilians, how someone might think they see a pattern and start a rumor believing it to be true.

You know, just because someone is "anti-regime" doesn't mean they need to be pro-rebel. It's quite possible, even reasonable, to look at the evidence and come to the conclusion that there are no good-guys in that conflict. Picking sides, not always necessary.

 

[marplots]

Those snipers are scary accurate.

 

[Darth Rotor]

Center of mass is easier to hit than a head shot. My rifle instructor taught me that.

Where is the baby in the body of a woman?
In the center of mass, lower third.

This may not be a plot, it may be simple training, and the decision to shoot women, which will tend to include pregnant women.

Guessing. I have no specialized insight on this. .

 

[Caustic Logic]

Is it accidental? I don't think so. Just to be clear, the snipers sent Dr. Nott six pregnant women hit in the uterus in a single day, and two on another day. They sent other hits demonstrating other patterns on other days. That's what he says anyway, and I'm inclined to believe it.

Question is who? I don't take the rumors he heard from rebels as anything more than a clue they know cover stories blaming the regime are needed.

YNet (Israel) ran a story on this: [http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4442562,00.html Record cruelty: Syrian rebels target fetuses]. I think they meant to say "snipers," as the article doesn't specify any reason to blame rebels. Just a slip I suppose. Might be fixed soon.

 

[Caustic Logic]

I think it's very unlikely snipers are actually targeting fetuses, but I can easily imagine in a war zone where there are snipers shooting civilians, how someone might think they see a pattern and start a rumor believing it to be true.

That's the claim by rebels, Dr. Nott, plenty of sick precedent, and my opinion. Considering that and your basis for doubt, do you still feel that way?

You know, just because someone is "anti-regime" doesn't mean they need to be pro-rebel. It's quite possible, even reasonable, to look at the evidence and come to the conclusion that there are no good-guys in that conflict. Picking sides, not always necessary.

Great, anti-both, anti-Islamist and anti-regime, whatever works too. Anyone that can add a perspective that helps expand things. I'd like to hear some thoughts why it would make sense for regime snipers - on orders or otherwise - to do this kid of thing in Aleppo - as their toeholds shrink and al-Qaeda types proliferate, why shoot random women and children?

No pressure to pick sides, except to note that peace will only come when one side or another wins. I know which one I'm rooting for and why. I state ti clearly to help acclimate others to the inevitable return of peace once we stop hemming and hawing and letting this drag on as we all remain hazy on the horrifying details.

 

[Caustic Logic]

Okay, here are the main links so far:

Nott Speaks to ITV
Nott speaks to the Times (not online)
Telegraph piece on that

Syria Relief press release

Flashback reference: Discussion thread from here about Misrata, Libya,in 2011: Baby Snipers...Propaganda? Or are they just that evil? We all agreed the x-ray there seemed totally fake, and that it was used twice for two different kids at least made it extra fake.

Do we even need to discuss the new x-ray, or is it fake out of the gate?

a decent critique here
One I'll go into a bit more: New Statesman: The Times says Assad's snipers target unborn babies: but is this horrifying photo real?

I called Syria Relief, the NGO that provided the Times with the photo. Yashar Kassar, the head of fundraising, said that the photo was taken in Aleppo by the Syria Relief media team that accompanied Dr Nott and others to the field hospital. “It is a real picture, taken by one of our team, and we can guarantee that,” he told me.

I'd even say a real photo of a real piece of transparent film with pigment added to depict an alleged x-ray image.

He added that Syria Relief also took a photo of the same baby after an operation to remove it from the mother’s womb, which he agreed to send to me. The photo is too graphic to post online, but it neither corroborates nor disproves the X-ray image above, as there is no evidence of any wound to the foetus’s forehead.

This is clearly the same image I found and now studied. Few will or should want to double-check, but it might be helpful. The x-ray showed the bullet still inside but headed to the forehead from the back (with no skull disruption at all). It's unclear why McBain expected it to resume the journey later and create an exit wound.

Also, I disagree with "it neither corroborates nor disproves the X-ray image." Why is there a huge wound to the top of this baby's head, a bit right of center? I don't see how it can have anything to do with the depicted bullet trajectory, clearly back-to-front with nothing to do with the upper half of the head at all. It doesn't line up. I don't think the two images, the fake one and real one, were ever of the same baby, even before the doctoring.

Final two links, our evolving analysis, again:
Picture talk page

 

[Darth Rotor]

Is it accidental? I don't think so.

The snipers might be on a bonus or quota system for pay. Piecework, as it were. Therefore, if they whack a guy, they get credit for one unit of production. If they whack a pregnant woman, ensuring the kill on the bun in the oven as well as the expectant mother, they get credit for two units of production. Even snipers appreciate a slightly bigger paycheck.

Presuming that the above is what is behind all this, you are now free to lament the evils of quotas, or of capitalism, depending upon your political point of view.

 

[Caustic Logic]

The snipers might be on a bonus or quota system for pay. Piecework, as it were. Therefore, if they whack a guy, they get credit for one unit of production. If they whack a pregnant woman, ensuring the kill on the bun in the oven as well as the expectant mother, they get credit for two units of production. Even snipers appreciate a slightly bigger paycheck.

Presuming that the above is what is behind all this, you are now free to lament the evils of quotas, or of capitalism, depending upon your political point of view.

One thing has become clear is that governments allowed to run rampant will wage all out war against their people, especially children, and wallow in ever deeper evil until some shining knights can set the rogue nation straight. Worse yet, it'll be banal evil, with quotas and euphemisms. Good thing we have opposition activists to expose each and every crime as the regime says "D'oh!"

I guess Nott told the Times the snipers are largely or totally non-Syrian. Instead Assad brought in African mercenaries Chinese and Azeri mercenaries (not Russian and Iranian ones). As someone noted, I guess they don't have cigarettes in China. But of course that's just a token of honor, not the real prize. The pay is surely good, always plenty money to spend on self-demonizing evil. Sanctions aren't tight enough.

 

[Caustic Logic]

State of analysis over at ACLOS: the x-ray actually seems to be of the baby in the photo, or one laying in the same position, with the head wound's visibility not entirely clear (see below).

The x-ray is stamped ACMC, Aleppo City Medical Council, the kid (and presumably his surviving mother) listed as from Bustan al-Qasr, Aleppo, check. Only other sniper death that day in Aleppo (I think) is an older woman, 52, shot in the chest, from a different area and with a different name. The fetus is not just fully developed but post-mature - a smart member says about 42 weeks. Already named: Abdulraaouf Mohammad Mezmar, CDV reports.

The wound in the photo is to the top of his head, a bit right and front of center. Size and degree not clear from low lighting, but possible entry point, with some disrupted skull (a lip of it visible), if the bullet were tumbling massively as it traveled down through his head, to take the position seen.

But in my opinion that sounds odd to turn that much, 90 degrees or more, and if I'm right to doubt that:
- this implied (downward) trajectory clashes with the (forward) one the (alleged) bullet was visibly on or near, along which there's no entry point appearing in x-ray.

Further, this wound has sort of an interesting line to it (see right forehead), possibly more like a sword, or shrapnel, etc. than a bullet.

Note: the x-ray image is entirely open to manipulation with physical or digital bullet insertion. But the photo version, dark and blessedly unclear as it is, is of that class of image we rightly consider hard to fake and presume to be real. They seem to/are supposed to show the same snuffed out little person.

Ambiguity: in the x-ray, the line of skull stops about where the visible head wound is, just above the forehead, as if marking that (and is that a faint line down the other side, marking the line along his forehead?, but the whole top seems to have this ethereality all the way to the back. Is this nothing but the "soft spot"? Or some x-ray artifact?

 

[Mycroft]

Guessing. I have no specialized insight on this. .

To some, common sense is a specialized insight.

 

[Mycroft]

That's the claim by rebels, Dr. Nott, plenty of sick precedent, and my opinion. Considering that and your basis for doubt, do you still feel that way?

Yes. Why would I change?

I'd like to hear some thoughts why it would make sense for regime snipers - on orders or otherwise - to do this kid of thing in Aleppo - as their toeholds shrink and al-Qaeda types proliferate, why shoot random women and children?

I think the most likely explanation is it's not a pattern, but if it were, the most common reason to target non-combatants is to break their will to support the fight.

 

[Pacal]

I just don't get some peoples support for family dictatorships. The Assad regime is an unpleasant one. The late Assad senior's cult of personality was absurd. Also its brutality was well documented. That a lot of Syrians would want to get of it is hardly surprising. The rebellion is something the Assad regime has thoroughly sown the fields and is now reaping the harvest. I suspect the war will "end" with a divided Syria.

 

[Caustic Logic]

Yes. Why would I change?

Because they say six pregnant women hit in the uterus were brought in on one day, and enough common injuries on other days to suggest a pattern each day, and enough patterns set between days (groin some days) that a game of patterns emerges. Plus these sick snipers shoot women, children, and elderly every day for no clear reason, so they're probably the kind of sickos who'd do that.

But then maybe they're just shooting around and causing the most evil only with their accidental hits, that they accidentally tend to repeat.

Or I guess you disbelieve either the game claims and the repeated injuries on the same day (which is fair enough - rebel claims deserve skepticism) or the whole mass sniper-shooting claims in rebel-plagued Aleppo, which goes against some decent documentation.

I think the most likely explanation is it's not a pattern, but if it were, the most common reason to target non-combatants is to break their will to support the fight.

Most common breaks down in the face of any contrary actual details. It seems to be people looking for food who cross the Karaj crossing where this mainly happens. On one side, government-held area under intesnse rebel food blockade, on the other side rebel areas where humanitarian supplies from Turkey do get delivered and can be had. But you have to cross there to get it, can't take back more than a handful of anything (except flour, none of that at all). So you have to keep going back every few days, and someone keeps shooting people there daily.

I admit I'm not caught up on all alleged or verifiable details here, like visuals on who's shot walking which way, etc. but I think I'm probably further on than you, and I'm still inclined to credit these accusations, just not the x-ray.

 

[Caustic Logic]

I just don't get some peoples support for family dictatorships. The Assad regime is an unpleasant one. The late Assad senior's cult of personality was absurd. Also its brutality was well documented. That a lot of Syrians would want to get of it is hardly surprising. The rebellion is something the Assad regime has thoroughly sown the fields and is now reaping the harvest. I suspect the war will "end" with a divided Syria.

I just love family dictatorships. Except the house of Saud or the Qatari royal family. They support freedom, which I hate.

Right?

The "well-documented" brutality includes the "well-documented" Houla massacre (my article and thus report is now the #1 search result), this baby sniper x-ray under discussion, the baby-sniping of this Christian kid, dozens of other cases we've examined and found similar problems with, and a thousands of other claims that no one has looked at so closely.

All from the last two years. Except the other part of the 40 years of brutality - 30,000 people killed duriong a 1982 Muslim Brotherhood uprising similar to this one that's now claimed at least 120,000 lives, about 1/3 each security forces, armed opposition, and civilians (including all the murky cases like the ones under study)

But thanks for the usefully specific thoughts.

 

[Pacal]

I just love family dictatorships. Except the house of Saud or the Qatari royal family. They support freedom, which I hate.

Right?

The "well-documented" brutality includes the "well-documented" Houla massacre (my article and thus report is now the #1 search result), this baby sniper x-ray under discussion, the baby-sniping of this Christian kid, dozens of other cases we've examined and found similar problems with, and a thousands of other claims that no one has looked at so closely.

All from the last two years. Except the other part of the 40 years of brutality - 30,000 people killed duriong a 1982 Muslim Brotherhood uprising similar to this one that's now claimed at least 120,000 lives, about 1/3 each security forces, armed opposition, and civilians (including all the murky cases like the ones under study)

But thanks for the usefully specific thoughts.

Touched a raw nerve I see. Much given to polemical idiocy I see. So you accept that the Assad regime is a family dictatorship that has done unpleasant things. What the thoroughly repellant Saudi and Qatari family dictatorship have to do with it are beyond me. So just why did you bring them up? Except of course for polemical muddying the waters. As for well documented. There is of course all those Amnesty International and Middle East Watch Reports. I also enjoyed your mind reading.

Oh and please grow up.

 

[Childlike Empress]

Touched a raw nerve I see. Much given to polemical idiocy I see. So you accept that the Assad regime is a family dictatorship that has done unpleasant things. What the thoroughly repellant Saudi and Qatari family dictatorship have to do with it are beyond me. So just why did you bring them up? Except of course for polemical muddying the waters. As for well documented. There is of course all those Amnesty International and Middle East Watch Reports. I also enjoyed your mind reading.

Oh and please grow up.

THAT drivel took you two months?

 

[Mycroft]

Jeebus, sometimes correcting people on the Internet who are wrong just needs to take a lower priority over real life.

 

[trustbutverify]

Not in twoofer land, I guess.

 

[Polaris]

I just don't get some peoples support for family dictatorships. The Assad regime is an unpleasant one. The late Assad senior's cult of personality was absurd. Also its brutality was well documented. That a lot of Syrians would want to get of it is hardly surprising. The rebellion is something the Assad regime has thoroughly sown the fields and is now reaping the harvest. I suspect the war will "end" with a divided Syria.

For some people, if they oppose the US that's good enough for them.

 

[BStrong]

I first posted the following couple paragraphs in the main Syria thread, but decided it merits its own space. I'd like to start with the x-ray, and expand into other evidence to see as clearly as possible what's actually happening to whom, where, when, and why. Obviously, not just pregnant women but all civilians shot by snipers wherever the recently reported stuff is happening. To whatever extent members here want to contribute to that, here's a thread.
---
The latest atrocity, have we discussed it yet? Sniping fetuses - in Aleppo, it seems but remains veiled - where there are probably 5x as many foreign-funneled terrorists as regime troops left, they spend their final days watching loyalist areas starve under food blockades and aim for different body parts for fun, hitting kids in the shoulder one day, pregnant ladies through the fetus the next.

And there's X-ray proof that's laughably fake. Sound familiar?

http://acloserlookonsyria.shoutwiki...e_Syrian_Conflict#Brutal_.22Games.22_In_Syria

Dr. David "Nott MI6" Nott is of particular interest to me.

For those needing a refresher of how child-sniping x-ray proof has previously been deployed in Libya to encourage intervention, see the images right above that section. This case, I fear, has a grim real side that one didn't, but at least a giggle-worthy bit of fakery is there too.

ETA: Details on the x-ray image source here. Not as fun is the visible-light post-partum photo you can link to from there of what they say is the same baby, skull apparently as intact as it seems in the x-ray, but dead. It says he and his mother were shot August 24 (apparently she lived). They were from Bustan al-Qasr, on the front lines of Aleppo, where all those dead bodies wound up floating in the still river in January (and other times), for example - near at least one infamous (regime?) sniper-plagued, rebel-controlled choke-point. Seems that's where Dr. Nott was working, though in a couple of interviews and a few reports, it's never specified just where in Syria he was.

I'm not qualified to comment on the specifics argued as to the X-rays, but for the record "Sniper" is one of the most overused and misused descriptive terms the media and the general public accepts, and they accept it without question.

Rather than the "one shot, one kill" popular fiction mythology, most of the shooting described isn't "sniping" at all, it's simple aimed fire, and many of the shooters are getting hits by luck, not skill. They aren't reading the distance, wind and other atmospheric conditions and adjusting glass as required, they're simply sqeezing the trigger on any target of opportunity (trained marksman have a target priority list -officers, forward observers, radio operators and crew served weapons crews top the list) that they observe.

I highly doubt that there any trained snipers "aiming for the fetus" in Syria or elsewhere. I don't doubt at all that joe-blow private Achmed in the SA or the militias shoot at anything that moves, including children and pregnant women, but I'd bet that most targets hit by that fire are more happenstance than skill, and the shooters aren't "snipers" by any stretch of the imagination.

 

[catsmate]

For some people, if they oppose the US that's good enough for them.

Indeed.

I'm not qualified to comment on the specifics argued as to the X-rays, but for the record "Sniper" is one of the most overused and misused descriptive terms the media and the general public accepts, and they accept it without question.

Rather than the "one shot, one kill" popular fiction mythology, most of the shooting described isn't "sniping" at all, it's simple aimed fire, and many of the shooters are getting hits by luck, not skill. They aren't reading the distance, wind and other atmospheric conditions and adjusting glass as required, they're simply sqeezing the trigger on any target of opportunity (trained marksman have a target priority list -officers, forward observers, radio operators and crew served weapons crews top the list) that they observe.

Given the predominance of ill aimed bursts of automatic gunfire in many armies, such as the US, the concept of well aimed, methodical, fire may be alien to some.

I highly doubt that there any trained snipers "aiming for the fetus" in Syria or elsewhere. I don't doubt at all that joe-blow private Achmed in the SA or the militias shoot at anything that moves, including children and pregnant women, but I'd bet that most targets hit by that fire are more happenstance than skill, and the shooters aren't "snipers" by any stretch of the imagination.

This. Any fetal hits are utterly by chance.

 

[Mycroft]

Yes, why would anyone aim for a fetus when the mother's head or chest are much an easier targets and accomplish the same thing?

 

[theprestige]

Yes, why would anyone aim for a fetus when the mother's head or chest are much an easier targets and accomplish the same thing?

Because false flag, obviously.

It's baked into the thread title: The OP would like you to seriously consider the possibility that snipers are deliberately targeting fetuses in their own faction.

 

[catsmate]

Because false flag, obviously.

It's baked into the thread title: The OP would like you to seriously consider the possibility that snipers are deliberately targeting fetuses in their own faction.

I suspect at least some of the silliness is due to the OP's utter lack of familiarity with weapons and warfare, allied with unwillingness to research; s/he made a number of comments/suggestions (also relating to claims of a "false-flag" attack) in a previous thread relating to Libya that were utterly ridiculous to anyone with even basic knowledge of the weapons involved.

 

[BStrong]

Indeed.


Given the predominance of ill aimed bursts of automatic gunfire in many armies, such as the US, the concept of well aimed, methodical, fire may be alien to some.


This. Any fetal hits are utterly by chance.

In the US, any non-sanctioned aimed rifle fire instantly becomes "sniper" fire, and just about any long gun w/ glass is a "sniper" rifle.

The media loves it,

 

[theprestige]

I suspect at least some of the silliness is due to the OP's utter lack of familiarity with weapons and warfare, allied with unwillingness to research; s/he made a number of comments/suggestions (also relating to claims of a "false-flag" attack) in a previous thread relating to Libya that were utterly ridiculous to anyone with even basic knowledge of the weapons involved.

Was that the "make any gun into a mortar by dropping a mortar shell down the barrel" thread? Good times.

 

[catsmate]

Was that the "make any gun into a mortar by dropping a mortar shell down the barrel" thread? Good times.

Please no. I'm going to nightmares anyway after reading Equoid.

 

[Bikewer]

Targetting babies is a propaganda ploy that's very old.... In WWII essentially all sides accused each other of variations of "throwing babies into the air and catching them on bayonets".

 

[Polaris]

Targetting babies is a propaganda ploy that's very old.... In WWII essentially all sides accused each other of variations of "throwing babies into the air and catching them on bayonets".

Not a stretch WRT the Imperial Japanese.