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Were innocent civilians killed by the US military because of a Social Media post? [1]
['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']
Date: 2025-05-02
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I stumbled across this story and tried to find more on it but only found a few mentions on the web so far; it’s not widely publicised. The article I refer to has several links to supporting information. All the evidence is circumstantial, but it is an extremely unsettling possibility.
Timeline of events:
Early April Dutch OSINT social media account on X posts geo location of a quarry saying it was an underground Houthi base
28th April the site is struck by air strikes; 8 civilians reportedly killed (NB: not verified as far as I know)
Later that day the OSINT social media account admits that they should not have publicly posted the location and that their analysis had been incomplete. They apologised and posted screenshots of 500 EURO of charity payments made in penance
The action of the account implies that at the very least they consider it possible that their post contributed to the strike plan.
Here is a link to the article
The Social Media account and its OSINT contribution is referenced by non-governmental authorities in papers e.g.
ISW — contains a paragraph about the strike
CTC — references the account several times in this 2024 paper
This could, of course, be an unfortunate coincidence layered on top of a tragic intelligence error. However, it’s indicative of how amateur and inept the Hegseth led administration is that this is even considered a possibility. The Pentagon is leaky right now — maybe we’ll learn that Hegseth shared an X post over Signal to CENTOM.
Just my personal note: I followed a lot of OSINT accounts on Ukraine. Although there is of course an expectation of a high standard of quality given the seriousness of the topic, even if the source of the location was this account I do not hold them responsible unless they were aware that their intelligence is used in military planning. Ultimate accountability is on the people in government and the military who selected and approved targets.
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