Initial reports of a U.S. drone strike on Idlib, northwestern Syria.

Reports state that 1 person was killed.

Update: 3 reported killed

Palestinian and Israeli sources confirm that target of the strike was Hamas official Abu Yasser. He was killed, along with his son and daughter.

One year ago today, the battle of Chasiv Yar began.

It started with a Russian armoured personnel carrier dropping off soldiers in the first houses on Zelena Street, where they clung to their positions for days, before beginning the assault on the first high-rise buildings of the infamous Kanal Micro-district. From there, brutal urban combat raged for literally every street, every building, every room, before the district fell.

Russia then launched the attack on the main part of the city which was even more heavily defended by the AFU who had brought in further reinforcements and reserves.

365 days later, and with thousands of lives lost on both sides, the battle for this strategic hilltop city is still ongoing, with Russian forces now controlling approximately 70% of the city. Ukraine continues to hold out in the ruins of the city centre, the northwestern suburbs and the southern and southwestern suburbs.

Chasiv Yar is the gateway to the rest of Ukrainian-controlled Donetsk Oblast, and both sides know it.

This battle will go down in history as one of the most brutal, as well as one of the most crucial points in a war, of the 21st century.

For those interested, I came up with a formula to calculate the rough time it will take for an Iskander-M ballistic missile to hit its target.

Obviously, first you need to know the specific place in which the launches occur from. For launches from Crimea, they usually come from the vicinity of Simferopol, while launches from Kursk come from near the Khalino Air Base.

So, to figure out how long it will take for the missile to hit the target that you think it will be headed for (e.g. most Iskanders from Crimea target Kryvyi Rih, most Iskanders from Kursk target Sumy, and most Iskanders from Belgorod target Kharkiv), you can use this formula below.

Time = Distance / 2.4 - 30 seconds

To safely assume that the missile hit an open area, was a false identification, or targeted a different city to the one you initially thought it would, add on 20 seconds for the general time it takes for monitoring channels to pick up on explosion reports.

So: Time = Distance / 2.4 - 10 seconds.

Hope this helps!

Obviously it has its issues, as you need to know which monitoring channels to trust on launch reports, but it should work well if you have the correct information.

In my opinion there are three options for what happened here:

1. Ukrainian anti-air gunners hit a Geran-2 drone, hitting its guidance system or its engine, causing it to go off target, crashing into this building. This has happened numerous times in the past and is a relatively common occurrence for small-caliber gunners. This is different to one being shot down and the debris falling on said building, as the payload can remain intact and still detonate upon impact.

2. There was a high-value target in this building, e.g. Ukrainian officers, manpower concentrations, command and control centre, etc. I personally find this unlikely as this appears to be a flatting building, which would be a very unusual choice for any of the aforementioned possibilities. While some may argue that an Iskander would be utilised for this, it wouldn't make sense as Iskanders are very destructive, especially for densely populated urban areas which are common for major cities like Kharkiv. While it would be more effective due the payload being more likely to damage or destroy any underground facilities compared to a Geran-2 drone, and the fact that the speed of Iskanders makes it difficult to get to shelter if you are the target, but nevertheless, these are hardly ever utilised on small buildings in densely populated areas.

3. This was an isolated war crime with the target being set by the operators to a residential building as revenge for Ukrainian attacks on Russia, or just to terrorise the local population. This is obviously very unlikely, but not impossible.