The company which provided the highly sophisticated injury simulations featured in the Newsnight report is Trauma FX, which proudly claims to be “UK’s leading provider of realistic casualty simulation”.

TraumaFX’s website states that it “support(s) various military forces internationally” and “can easily travel international as we are a mobile team and can work in any location”. The company has over 10 years’ experience of supporting UK military training exercises.

In addition to providing clients with “Casualty Role Play Actors & Amputee Actors” and “SIMWOUNDS” (“practical, realistic” wound effects), TraumaFX is specialist “in simulating CBRN [Chemical, Biological, Radiological and Nuclear] injuries and conditions”.

The company, which is based in Thirsk, North Yorkshire – just over 20 miles from the Army Medical Services Training Centre (AMSTC) at Strensall, near York, where HOSPEX exercises are conducted – also creates “SIMBODIES” – “life like dead bodies and body parts designed and produced to appear extremely realistic, heavily weighted and ideal for use in CSI, disaster victim identification and mortuary training exercises.”

Some of the highly realistic “SIMBODIES” and body parts created by TraumaFX

Further examples of Trauma FX’s impressive work can be viewed on the company’s Facebook page.

As noted below it may be significant that Atareb hospital staff were attending a battle first aid training course in Turkey on the date of the alleged napalm bomb attack.

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Unidentified western male filmed at Atareb hospital

Fuller details here. See also Who are these men?

A western male in a grey shirt and spectacles appears at 2:06 in the BBC News report of 30 September 2013. He is carrying a camera and ducks out of sight as he realises that he is in shot with the BBC’s interview with Dr Rola Hallam. Elsewhere in the BBC’s footage he can be seen communicating by walky-talky.

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The presence of this person is perplexing, as at no point in its correspondence has the BBC suggested that the Panorama crew in Syria at that time consisted of anyone other than reporter Ian Pannell, cameraman/producer Darren Conway and fixer/translator Mughira Al Sharif, plus presumably local drivers/minders.

In an appeal review request of 28 December 2014 another complainant directly asked the BBC to identify the man in the images below. In its rejection of this request the BBC Trust’s Editorial Standards Committee ignored this question, along with several other potentially significant points.

Update: The editor of Panorama ‘Saving Syria’s Children’, Tom Giles, has commented angrily here, speculating that the man may be a BBC News safety advisor.

Update: Further scrutiny of footage from the events of 26 August 2013 has revealed several other figures holding or using walkie-talkies – see Who are these men?.

Update: The male in the grey shirt and spectacles seems to be the same person who can be seen accompanying Ian Pannell at 42 seconds in this earlier BBC News report (see screencap below). This would appear to endorse Tom Giles’ speculation that the man may be a BBC News safety adviser however it may not explain why he would be carrying a camera nor his concern, during an alleged mass casualty situation, to avoid interrupting a filmed interview with Dr Rola Hallam.

Update April 2020: The man discussed above has been identified by a former BBC employee as a member of the BBC High Risk Team. I am withholding his name on this blog.

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Second unidentified European at Atareb Hospital

Fuller details here. See also Who are these men?

At 21 seconds in the below You Tube video (higher quality source copy here) shot outside Atareb Hospital, Aleppo on 26 August 2013 a white male can be glimpsed snatching a piece of patterned fabric from the back of a pickup truck. Moments later a hand – perhaps belonging to the same man – is seen flicking a dark sheet over an unseen object in the truck.

The man appears to be European, is wearing a microphone headset and seems to be in military garb:

The presence of a militarily attired westerner at the Aleppo hospital to which alleged victims of the alleged Urm al-Kubra napalm attack were transported would appear highly incongruous.

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Woman in black dress

Further details here. See also “Napalm bomb” school located.

From 2:38 to 2:44 in Ian Pannell and Darren Conway’s BBC Ten O’Clock News report of 29 August 2013 a group of four people, including a woman in a black dress with a distinctive gold flower pattern, rushes through Atareb Hospital gate, interrupting an interview with Dr Rola Hallam.

Darren Conway’s footage featuring a woman in a distinctive black dress, also shown in Saving Syria’s Children (36 minutes).

A longer version of the sequence appears at 36 minutes in Saving Syria’s Children, immediately followed by a brief “flashback” shot of the woman’s arrival at Atareb Hospital, in which she is seen being stretchered on a mattress out of the back of an ambulance by five men, apparently screaming in agony.

In marked contrast to her apparent condition upon arrival , video footage shot at Urm al-Kubra on the day of the alleged incendiary attack shows the woman walking calmly and unaided towards the ambulance (Video A, 7 – 12s). After presumably entering via the two steps at the vehicle’s side entrance, she then appears seated upright (Video B, 7 – 11s) as she embarks upon the short (approximately 13 km) journey to Atareb Hospital, where she was filmed by Conway.

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The woman in the black and gold dress, who was presented as an incendiary bomb victim in the BBC News report of 29 August 2013, walks towards ambulance calmly and unaided, prior to taking an upright seat.

Enlargements from the same sequence

There can be no doubt that Video A and Video B both relate to the same alleged events reported by the BBC and that the woman entering the ambulance in Video A is the same person who is carried out of it in the BBC’s footage.

Video A was posted on 26 August 2013, the day of the alleged attack; Video B was posted two days later. Scrutiny of the ambulance in Videos A and B makes it clear that it is the same one filmed by Conway. Moreover, the two military figures who accompany the woman into the ambulance are clearly identifiable as being present in the BBC’s footage [14] [15]:



(Left) Man in combat fatigues with rolled up sleeves and trousers accompanies woman in black dress into ambulance at 9s in Video A; (Right) Same man, identifiable by camouflage pattern on clothing, helps to carry the woman out of the ambulance upon her arrival at Atareb Hospital at 36:39 in Saving Syria’s Children.



(Left) Man in combat fatigues, cap, dark body vest and carrying weapon boards ambulance at 8s in Video B and at 40s in Video A; (Right) Same man assists in carrying woman from ambulance at 36:43 in Saving Syria’s Children.

Both men board the ambulance on its right side; both are initially in the rear with the woman in the black dress before the man with rolled up sleeves and trousers climbs out and gets into the front passenger seat (Video A, 36s). Upon arrival at Atareb Hospital both men exit the ambulance on its right hand side and both assist in carrying the woman in the black dress out through the tailgate.

Video B, 11s

Saving Syria’s Children 36:34

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Munitions allegedly used in the attack

See also “Napalm bomb” school located

Reports of the munition type used in the alleged attack vary considerably.

In his original BBC News report of 29 August 2013 Ian Pannell stated:

We don’t know for sure what was in the bomb, but the injuries and debris suggests something like napalm or thermite.

Dr Saleyha Ahsan, one of the British medics featured in Saving Syria’s Children, has written:

Peter Bouckaert, of Human Rights Watch, believes the weapon was a ZAB incendiary device. It contains a jellied fuel which “adheres to the skin increasing the level of injury … it’s a nasty weapon.”

In a report for CNN Dr Ahsan states:

“The descriptions were “fire falling like rain, just falling like rain”, erm and and er “plumes of flames” and then “balls of flames falling out of the sky”

The Daily Mail cites a report in which Mary Wareham of the arms division of Human Rights Watch indicates:

the bomb weighed 1,100lbs and contained a fuel similar to napalm.

In this video Wareham elaborates:

a fixed wing jet aircraft dropped a 500kg unitary bomb containing some kind of jellied fuel-like substance similar to napalm.

Posts on The Syrian Archive refer to a “phosphine chemical attack” while captions beneath images taken by photographer Amer Alfaj relate “opposition” claims of “Napalm and White Phosphorous”.

A tweet put out by Reuters the day after the alleged incident refers to “phosphorus bombs and napalm”:

Syrian opposition says Assad's forces drop phosphorus bombs and napalm on civilians in rural Aleppo on Monday http://t.co/Oc3XveaBI7 — Reuters (@Reuters) August 27, 2013

This Turkish article (translated here) quotes a Syrian doctor “who came to Turkey together with the wounded” as stating:

“At 6 pm yesterday evening, warplanes fired a missile and then sprayed a phosphorus bomb.”

Below are a number of images from the two alleged incendiary attack locations, taken from several videos and still images. Some readers may be better placed than I to assess which, if any, of the above claims are consistent with the munitions remnants pictured.

Note that in Video D – uploaded to You Tube a day after the alleged incendiary attack – the munition casing is handled freely (see first gallery below) and that in Video A – apparently shot on the day of the attack itself – one of those present has no qualms about standing on a munition casing in his bare feet (see second gallery below).

Images of munition remnants at the school, variously from Video C, Video D, Saving Syria’s Children (41:33) and photographs taken by Dr Saleyha Ahsan and posted on The Phoenix Foundation website.

Images of munition remnants at bombed building, Video A.

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FSA commander attests attack did not take place

This information was submitted to the BBC on 13 October 2014.

A team of Syrian investigators which has been researching the alleged attack has been in contact with a former commander of the Al-Tawhid Brigade who was based in Aleppo province in August 2013 and who was in close contact with events in Urm Al-Kubra. The team has provided me with the commander’s name.

The commander attests that the “napalm bomb” story is untrue and that none of the events depicted by the BBC occurred. He has provided this brief declaration (his voice is disguised) which the lead investigator has transcribed as follows:

We the fighters of the Free Syrian Army in the North West areas of the City of Aleppo we declare that we were present in this region in August 2013 and we did not meet any air strike with the substance of Napalm on Urum al Kubra or on any other region in the North West Aleppo countryside and we deny the cheap fabrication of the BBC and of the stations that imitate her because it undermine the credibility of the Free Syrian Army. Saying this we do not hesitate to criminalize the criminal acts of the Assad regime and its murderous extermination of its people. And we have done a field investigation with the help of the delegate of the Free Syrian Red Crescent and this has conducted us to confirm what we are saying : no victims, no traces and no memory with anybody of the alleged air strikes with the substance of Napalm.

The commander has agreed to provide a full statement to the BBC providing that his identity is protected. He is also willing to testify publicly under appropriate international protections. The commander, who is now attached to another faction allied to the Free Syrian Army, has offered to provide BBC journalists with safe transit from Antakya, Turkey to Urm Al-Kubra to interview witnesses assembled by the Syrian team and to conduct their own investigation.

A July 2014 telephone conversation between two members of the Syrian investigative team, transcribed here, provides an account from a local resident who also affirms that the alleged napalm bomb attack did not occur.

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Identification of participant in hospital footage

This information was submitted to the BBC on 2 September 2014 and 13 October 2014. Fuller details here. See also Have journos (and filmmakers) passed up the Beatles of all scoops?.

Update May 2020: I have emailed the woman directly to ask her about her involvement in the events of 26 August 2013.

A 51 year old Dutch-Armenian woman (first two images below) contacted me through Facebook in June 2014 to request that I remove a screengrab from ‘Saving Syria’s Children’ which I had posted on the site, claiming that she was in it and that she did not wish others to see it.

Although the woman was not featured in the particular image I had posted, I interpreted her words as possibly meaning she had been photographed or filmed at Atareb hospital on 26 August 2013, the day of the alleged attack. The woman did not respond to my requests for clarification. The woman’s Facebook page reveals that in 2012 she travelled between Syria and the Netherlands, where she resides. There is a gap in her Facebook posts in the weeks around 26 August 2013.

Some weeks after she had contacted me I came across this You Tube video shot at Atareb hospital on 26 August 2013 in which at 20:36 a woman is briefly seen having white cream applied to her face and hands (third image below). The resemblance between this person and the woman who contacted me is extremely striking.

Update, April 2016: Further images of the woman who contacted me are currently viewable on the Facebook account of one of her relatives. Two are reproduced below. The first is dated 10 January 2015 and tagged “in Netherlands”. The second is dated 22 October 2014 but appears to have been taken some years earlier. I have cropped the woman’s relative out of both images. Compare with the woman from the You Tube video.

Update, July 2018: Further images of the woman from Facebook, such as the one on the left below, bear a striking resemblance to the woman present at Atareb Hospital on 26 August 2013.

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Dr Rola Hallam and Hand in Hand for Syria

Dr Rola Hallam, who features throughout Saving Syria’s Children, is described as “a British doctor visiting for the charity Hand in Hand for Syria”.