By Marguerite Ward & Ken Aragaki
As the United States grapples with what steps to take to fight the so-called Islamic State in Syria, many people still struggle to understand the war that’s going on there. Our data story will break down the war Syria so far in 2015 in one comprehensive interactive map. We will visualize details about U.S. coalition-led airstrikes and their impact (number of ISIS leaders killed, etc), civilian deaths from rebel fighting and torture. Our data sources will be from humanitarian-led organizations as well as the U.S. Central Command’s office and will answer the question – what’s the latest information available on ISIS activity and what are the details surrounding the continuous number of civilian casualties.
Data Sources
Violations Documentation Center in Syria: 716 civilian deaths between Jan. 1 and Feb. 25, 2015
U.S. Central Command http://www.centcom.mil/en/news/articles
*We will collect the number and locations of US-led airstrikes in Syria from the Central Command’s blog post/press releases: http://www.centcom.mil/en/news/articles
Contacts
VDC
Bassam Al-Ahmad, spokesperson, b.alahmad@vdc-sy.info
http://www.vdc-sy.info/index.php/en/contact
U.S. Central Command
7115 South Boundary Blvd., MacDill AFB, FL 33621-5101
Central Command Communications Integration Public Affairs (CCCI PA)
Media Section
(813) 529-0220; (813) 529-0213
Human Rights Watch
Nadim Houry, Deputy Director, Middle East and North Africa Division
http://www.hrw.org/bios/nadim-houry
Report: http://www.hrw.org/news/2015/02/24/syria-new-spate-barrel-bomb-attacks
Syrian Observatory for Human Rights
Rami Abdurrahman, Founder & Director
+447722221287; +447971807965; +447937662469; +201066454801
syrianhr@gmail.com; syriahr@hotmail.com; syriahr@syriahr.com