The Battle for Al-Bab: Verifying Euphrates Shield Vehicle Losses
The Turkish military operation dubbed ‘Euphrates Shield’ (ES) began on August 24, 2016, aiming to clear an area of 5,000 square kilometres of Syrian territory, and is conducted jointly with Syrian rebel factions of the Free Syrian Army (FSA). Within four months, over 2,000 square kilometres were captured from so-called Islamic State (IS) and Kurdish factions, and the forces are entering the city of al-Bab at the time of writing.
But the operation comes at a cost, especially since Turkey started an offensive on the same city of al-Bab, around 40 kilometres east of Aleppo. A sheet listing Turkish Armed Forces (TAF) vehicles which are damaged, hit, or of which the status is unknown, near al-Bab started making rounds on news websites and social media on December 23, 2016.
No less than eleven tanks, three infantry (mobility) fighting vehicles, and an armoured personnel carrier are on the list. The sheet includes columns for the number plate, the military unit, a rough location, and a comments section, mostly referring what part of the vehicle was damaged by what kind of weapon.
This investigation aims to authenticate the claims on the sheet, and does so by using open sources: openly available sources to anyone with an Internet connection, as well as satellite imagery obtained via DigitalGlobe.
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