Thread - Just spent a great week running a @bellingcat workshop, as usual we ended with two days of participant led investigations, including the investigation of this video claiming to show US strikes on Syria back in April
There’s a number of details visible, most obvious being the large pylon and partly finished roof top.
First we decided to see if we could find any maps of the pylons in Syria, but what there was left a lot to be desired, but it was a start, and we could see Damascus had multiple lines of pylons running through it.
geni.org/globalenergy/l…
iaea.org/NuclearPower/D…
So one approach was to search satellite imagery of Damascus looking for pylons, in an attempt to narrow down the possible locations it could be.
It was even possible to find images of some of the pylons in Google Earth photos, and that's when we realised some pylons had flat tops, unlike the pointed pylon visible in the video.
Then we also noticed in the video there was something that looked like it could be a water tower, and we found a photo of what looks like it could have been a similar water tower, near pylons
Next we started trying to geolocate the photograph, so we could figure out which direction the water tower and pylons were in so we could find those. Fortunately there's not a lot of churches in Damascus, so it was pretty easy to find the location.
This pointed to the direction of the Qaboun Industrial Park, and handily Wikimapia has electricity pylons in the area marked, narrowing down our possible search area, but were they the correct pointy pylons, as seen in the original video?
The area had been captured in August of 2013, and ANNA News had documented the operation, dubbed "Operation Al Kabune" providing footage of the area, and confirming the pylons were pointy
And in a photosphere nearby there's a visible water tower, not dissimilar to the one visible in the video, but is this the water tower we're looking for? google.co.uk/maps/@33.54269…
Other water towers and pylons are visible in the area, including one that matches a pointed water tower, so this seems like the closest we've got so far, but can you #digitalsherlocks find the exact spot the original video was recorded? google.co.uk/maps/@33.53880…
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